*Sorry for putting to the trouble those of you who dropped me a line. Many, many, thanks for being so kind with your words of appreciation for my efforts. Must have been the snow that may have been the cause of making me wonder as to whether you may or may not have received my previous correspondence. All's well that's well again. I had been wondering as to whether my "words of wisdom" (???) had taken the wrong turning and had gone astray.* *I know you won't mind if I take a bit of a rest in my old age* *now for a while before I inflict my "words of wisdom" (???) on you again*. *In the meantime there will, I hope, be many others better qualified to fill in the many gaps that may still remain for filling about lives and stories of the people who lived in Beara when there were no such things there as televisions, u-tubes, and all these modern inventions that one comes across now. Life was less pressurised and simple then. Old people had more time to light a pipe, chew a bit of tobacco, sit around the fire, sing an old song, play an ancient lament on the fiddle or a few jigs on the single-row "melodgion" and tell all about many, many stories that the Schoolmasters read out for them about what happened to their ancestors when they crossed the wide ocean to make a living in America and send a few dollars home to those left after them. Unfortunately, when many of those stories are left still to be told, they will probably be lost forever.* *Kind regards to all from Joan and myself.* * Riobard*.