And they ignore the role of the middle class. The source for change may have lain in the middle class. Note that the 17 th century was a period of growing general interest in peasant dance the nascent contra dance movement in all its forms and with all its nascent romanticism. Contra Dance and related interests perhaps brought together the melodic emphasis of rural music with the technological innovations of the day. Hence, the possible German or other continental influence in the technology of the closed end.
Contra dance is only a suggestion and probably too narrow a definition of the times.
Anyway, documenting the two division styles in the manuscripts would be worthwhile. My understanding of the local conditions in Northumberland would make artistic advances more likely in C17 than C16. There are apparently publications in local museums which suggested that the reivers recited poems and played smallpipes between raids and trods. This seems very likely - not. I think it is far more likely that they came from continental Europe than that they survived from Roman times.