8:95) Dirk Flinthart 27-JAN-98 7:47

I have been Irish. I know the sound of the uillean pipes and the hum and thump of the big Kerry bodhran. I know the warmth of stone walls and fires of stolen peat, the wag of tongues and the fireflash of the heart, quick to wrath and quicker to laugh. They say all my fights are merry and all my songs are said, but the dead are always the same when we carry them home. Near a thousand years, now still carrying the dead home, where they crowd the rafters, tittering and giggling in the smoky dark above the lanternlights.

How many dead? How many for Brian Boru? How many for King Billy? How many for Bloody Liza? How many for Black Cromwell? For Pearse and Collins and de Valera? For the Green, the Orange, for the North and the South, for our wars and for the wars of the world? How many for the year our crops turned black in the fields? How many?

And all over the world, the sound of pipes, and flutes and drums. And all over the world, we carry our dead with us, crowding the rafters, playing catch-as-catch can with our shadows, dancing through our stories and our songs until there's no more room for the living, only the endless procession of the dead...