An Pluiméir Ceolmhar!
We may have well met! Where you at Slatterys the night some fellow threw a drink at Paddy's wife (gee around 1979 perhaps... maybe a few years latter...) I was playing in a booth with Johnny and Jane Kelton and one or two others... then about an hour latter Paddy came down from upstares, and she (who had been happly talking away at the bar for the past hour after) began to cry and point at the fellow... who darted into the hit and miss, meanwhile, Big Finbar barred the door to the jacks so Paddy wouldn't be up for murder... while Johnny said to my wife and I, and Jane, "Well, time to go..." a memorable night... it was entirely!!One that stands out in my mind!
A few months after John Keenan died, Johney and his mum, Mary, where over here in New York. Mary told me that she first saw John walk down a hill outside of Dublin. She said a few months ago, he and she were walking and he told her to wait at the bottom of the same hill. "He walked up that hill and took a heart attack and died. He walked down that hill into my life and then up that hill out of my life. Isn't that a Traveller's marrige?" she asked me.
Well, as to John B., a fine writer, though a flawed fellow. Who is perfect? But, I do feel prejudice is one very very black stain on one's being. I did enjoy his writing, and wish he was a bigger man about hospitality though.
Slan
Larry