Naked Ireland

Picture, if you will, a typical, greying, damp Irish afternoon; the light is dimly fading long before sunset.  Blurred by the drizzle and assiduous mist the rolling hills of a dozen shades of green and grey merge into one another on a smudged horizon.  The perpetual slate grey of afternoon twilight steadily turns to night through the soft steady mizzle.  How your cheeks tingle with the welcome heat when you come inside, and the benign fuzziness that lingers at your temples after two or three pints.  The dulcet tones of the bodhrán or the fiddle, that ebb and flow to the percussion of the rain against the windows, the sweet, musky smell of freshly burnt peat, the melodious lilt of the tale-tellers and the genial grins of the gathered, glowing in anticipation of story and song. Late into the evening magic and myth mingles as locals tell of enchantment and legend.  On a dank, dark night anything is possible, on this beautiful, beguiling isle and the lines ...