Eleven days in Ireland and it rained almost without ceasing. This gave vent to a moody sky which was somehow a necessary condition for historical atmosphere. Biking back to distant roots, I was discovering an Irishness in me which had long lay hidden. Maybe there's a bit of the blarney in all of us. It was becoming clear that the fairies had led me to people and places which were more a measure of my own character than anything I could say about it myself.

I didn't go to Skibbereen or Bantry Bay or west to Killarney and the Dingle Peninsula. Identity heaped onto Galway or Donegal is missing or accidental in some of the places I passed, but when these lesser known lands gave off their secrets it was a splendid thing indeed. And then I pushed on to Cobh and Limerick and to Doolin on the west coast of County Clare.

Across the grass I heard the sound of a harp. Gentle as a sun beam it filtered through the window. I saw a young girl strimming her chords bathed in winter light. Not to respect the importance of the simplicity is to misunderstand a deep notion of what Ireland is about. Whenever I stopped I just looked, and each time a landscape snapped into place...frozen in a moment of such beauty, the casual effect was one of brief enlightenment.