SNIPPET: In the Nov-Dec 2000 issue of Dublin's "Ireland of the Welcomes" magazine, Peter ROBINSON, who lives with his wife in Florida, describes their arrival with Irish friend, Mary, at a Sunday night ceili (pron. 'kay lee') on a late-Spring night in NW Ireland, some 25 miles from the nearest small city ... "'Nora, Kathleen, so grand to see you. These are my good friends from the States. Peter and Carolyn are staying in the wee cottage on Boa Island.' Mary looked over the crowd for Liam, the best fiddle player this side of Lough Erne. His music could really heat up the night as it had for most weekend nights during the last 55 years, or so. He wasn't in sight. No matter, James Duffy and his son Richard, were doing a beautiful duet. Richard, 14, was singing a youthful tune accompanied with his guitar and by his father on the piano. 'Jim, my friends from America would like to hear some traditional Irish country music and I would like to get some of these people up to dance.' 'Alright Mary, Richie, let's play the Castlederg whirl.' For the next three hours, Mary proceeded to demonstrate what a ceili is all about. Pure enjoyment of the company of friends in dancing, singing, laughing and just good talk and concern of each other. The music brought it all together. Carolyn and I were included in the evening's delight as if we were long lost relatives -- a warm, family kind of feeling I haven't experienced since my father took me and my brother Leo to our first Irish dance in Providence, Rhode Island, where they played the accordion and people danced a jig, or the many nights my aunts and uncles would come to our house and Pa would play the violin or tin whistle or harmonica, while someone else would sit at the upright piano on the same small round stool Leo and I used to try and get each other dizzy on. Liam then showed up and let his fiddle capture and enrich the joy of the assembled hearts. Carolyn and I danced new but somehow familiar dances. By closing, friend Mary O'Donnell had talked to, danced with, sang with, hugged, smiled at, and generally lit up the faces of almost all the people at the pub." Peter concludes -- "So, Ireland is less of a place but more the people, the kind and gentle speakers of grand greetings, the sometimes erratic drivers of the wide cow paths they call highways; the friendly B&B proprietors, the man and his wife who live to serve dinner graciously in their home-restaurant on top of the promontory overlooking Connemara lakes and mountains; the couple who invited us into their small motor caravan (a tiny European version of a motorhome) for some tea, the reclusive owner of the first class hotel on a cliff on the NE coast in view of Scotland, who allowed his dog to escort his guests through the halls and down the lane for a tour of the Glen and the young man in the small fishing village of Dingle who did not laugh at our attempts to speak Irish with him but rather spent an eternity trying to help us order lunch in his native tongue. All these people freely furnished us friendship, turf for the fireplace in our family's ancestral cottage and welcome in their homes and hearts."