Barndances called polka
I recently posted a lovely Josephine Keegan tune, the Thingemy Jig (https://thesession.org/tunes/20715#setting41114). Well worth checking out, by the way. One of the responses to the setting - thanks Trish Santer - was about the Thingummyjig Polka, a tune I was previously unfamiliar with.
On looking it up I discovered that it’s actually a barndance with polka in the name, just like the Bluebell Polka. That struck me as odd as I had assumed that the Bluebell Polka was uniquely named as some sort of musical joke. Out of curiousity I did a search of all barndances with ‘polka’ in the name and thirty eight came back. 38!
Clearly there is more going on than a humourous approach to naming tunes. So my question is whether anyone can explain why there is a body of barndances called the ‘something’ polka?