In Bainbridge town, in the County Down,
One morning last July,
Down a boreen green came a young colleen,
And she smiled as she passed me by...

The strings raise the music to the roofbeam, the voices penetrate the ancient timbers and the timeless Christmas night, and the smiles reflect one to another as harmonies and verses and laughter fill the rooms, laced with the pungent aromas of kitchen roasts and Guinness stout.

It is not for Christmas, nor for the booze that the dancers dance, the singers stretch to the high notes, the fiddlers flail their bows. In a strange way it is not about the music itself. even though every heart in the large tavern is swept up in its notes and its rhythms.

For these are the men and women of the Mudcat, bringing their lives together once again, wending their paths amongst one another around the oldest theme known to history. This Tavern and everyone in it are here for the love.

And the music carries this certainty far over the snow-wrapped valleys below the Tavern, and onwards across the crisp night, under the endless stars, and on.

The music carries on.