Colm returns with the next round of pints from the bar and takes his seat on the wooden bench beside you, where you sit watching the hurling game on television.  It's Galway playing the team from Tipp. Everyone's rooting for Galway, because that's where you are.

Colm is a good tour guide and he has been filling you in on the last 2,000 years of Irish athletic history.  "This is the fastest game in the world after ice hockey.  Mad dangerous too.  Someone's always getting clobbered."

One afternoon not long after, she hears music rising from the room and enters it expecting to see one of her daughters at the piano. (Any excuse to avoid their other studies.) Can’t believe what she sees. What she hears. Before the moment can overwhelm her he hits another chord, tinkles out another melody. Hands flashing everywhere.

They had to keep Percival McGann's casket closed for the wake. And nothing the mortician did – not the airtight sealing of the gold-embellished pine box or the wreaths made from woven palm fronds, hibiscus and hydrangeas – could mask the stench of the burnt corpse inside. Scores of mourners, mainly old cronies, distant relatives and current plantation workers in their wide-brimmed hats and stained overalls, stood in line to cast their eyes on what would be the last trace of the McGann way of life.