I'm still fixing to contact the Comhaltas folks eventually to see if they have any nice and precise rules for melodeon, or if it's pretty relative.
I was tempted to add that one would not bring a broad sword to a fencing tournament,
or a cross bow to a bow and arrow tournament, or a fishing pole to a fly fishing competition,
That's just the thing, a fencing foil for example is defined as
the foil blade is no more than 90 cm in length with a blunted (or foiled) tip. The maximum length of the assembled weapon is 110 cm; the maximum weight is 500gNot to get overly anal-retentive here, I'm just curious whether Comhaltas has some kind of definition of melodeon which is "having no more than 11 but no fewer than 9 buttons all uniformly in a row, with at least two but no more than four banks of reeds of which all but one must have a stop..." But like you say, about all I can do is ask them. Though I won't be at all surprised if it's just
the old Justice Stewart line: "I know a melodeon when I see it."
All that aside, I'd been wondering before why there aren't a ton of Fleadh clips on YouTube, and though many of y'all already know this it was news to me when I discovered said clips on the Comhaltas.ie site. Here's all their items specifically tagged melodeon:
http://comhaltas.ie/music/tag/MelodeonA lot of the clips are also licensed Creative Commons and are free downloads, so I put together a little Fleadh playlist for myself. Better still, they're pure solo 'box, so will be great learning fodder in the Slower-Downer.