Les Acadiens et leur Musique

Or, in other words, Acadiens and their music. Having dined in the new and interesting surroundings of the Sheep's Head Inn in Durrus last night, and my tummy suitably full of scampi and whatever else I mixed in with the dark brown stout, over the road I tottered in the pouring rain to Ross's. Only the toilets are new and shiny in Ross's. The rest is pure Irish, which is a good thing, so it is. The people I was with included relatives and can't be named for some reason or other, but the thing is that they were smoking cigarettes. This is not what it used to be in Ireland and you have to go outside nowadays to smoke. I stopped about 2 or 3 years ago, but I did have some last night, it has to be admitted. Luckily, Ross's has the old canopy thingy that can protect from the sun as well as from the rain, so we were able to huddle and puff without getting soaked.

Anyway, as the night wore on and the laughing got louder, we noticed that there was live musique coming from the other room - the main bar. It sounded like traditional Irish music - which I do like, especially when the old head starts to loosen up and swing from side to side in a liberal fashion as a direct result of the amount of alchohol sloshing inside the brain that lies therein. That last sentence went on a bit too long, so I'll start again: It sounded like traditional Irish music, but it was being played not only very well, but also very quickly. The rythms were a bit different. Our toes were all a-tapping and we nodded our heads in unison and verbally acknowledged to one another that this was indeed fine music, so it was. (It was really a very civilised evening). I leaned my head over and used the 3/4 ful pint in my outstretched left hand as a counter-balance so that I wouldn't fall and do myself an injury, what with my head being so top-heavy with porter. When I was sufficiently leaned over, I was able to get a clear view of the musicians. They were slightly more tanned than your average Irishman. One had a squeezebox and the other a guitar. Two girls were sitting with them. I noticed that the fella with his back to me had a tee-shirt with "Tour du Monde" on it, so I deduced that they might be French. One of the girlies passed me on her way for a wee-wee (I assume; i didn't actually ask her to confirm). "Hey." says I to her in fluent French, "Are ye French, are ye?" "We are, says she, "...from Brittany, in fact. Are you French?" "I'm not," says I. "I just speak ye're crazy language fluently."
Anyway, without going into the whole conversation word-for-word, it turned out that the music they were playing was, in fact, Canadian - from Quebec province. She went and did her thing and re-emerged refreshed to sit beside her musical colleagues once more. In they lashed to another furiously-paced tune. They then downed their instruments and sang another emigrant's lament type song in mariner's style called "La Virginie".

Anyway, I'm going to stop now because my tummy is very sick today and I don't think that all the porter has fully cleared out of my head yet.