A couple of years ago my wife and I were summoned on the first Friday of March to The Richwood House on the southern Banks of the Ohio. A horseman, Tony, from the County Offaly was to be married to an Indiana girl on the following day. Tony had leased the entire riverbank premises to lodge the dozens of relations who had gathered for the blessed event. He is doing really well in Kentucky - running a farm for Steve Cauthen - who at age 16 won the American Triple Crown aboard the champion, Affirmed.

The wife and I set up in a high-ceiling parlor below a crystal chandelier (underpinned by some polished hardwood flooring) that opened into another big room.   We commenced to playing the music and singing a few ballads into the empty space - giving the assembled the opportunity to take us or leave us.   The rooms soon filled to the brim. The flooring yielded a nice crack to the welt of trimmed sole and sharp heel and the ascendancy chandelier trembled at the thought of the whole thing. We went on like that for countless merry hours - with loads of party pieces being offered for good measure.

Somewhere along the line a guest singer announced himself - Uncle Paddy Behan from Leix. These Behans (Tony's mother's people) are braw-boned with high-color and I felt a sort of familial comfort in their company. They mentioned they were relations of the famous Behans of Dublin song and story. (I think I remember reading somewhere of Brendan Behan being knocked out of a field into a night's sleep by a bull at some Leix relations' farm.)

Paddy did not want to fight me per se, but he did wonder aloud how we each might fare if it came to that. I suppose I provoked him in that our music was really getting the place stirred up and the blood was high throughout the place. Nothing came of it.

He was on his way to Nashville after the wedding to get himself discovered. On the following evening, he was to call out a barfull of Hoosiers in his post-celebration ramblings - but - despite the hostilities during his introductions - I am told he was soon received into the Hoosiers' company as a friend.

Anyway, there's my 21st Century Behan story. If I wandered too far from the point of the thread, I apologize.