Letter from a visitor: 'If Kilkenny was heaven, I would be cool with it' - Kilkenny Live Highlights 2024

The following is a letter we received from a regular visitor to Kilkenny:

I have written to you previously and I feel compelled to write again. My pal Robert and I first went to the Kilkenny Roots in 2004 as a one-off and now after attending 19 consecutive Roots festivals and a Bruce Springsteen gig the following weekend, I feel the time is right to get in touch again.

I would like to thank all of the kind, welcoming, generous and friendly people that we have had the good fortune to meet since we first came and in all that time, our love for all things Kilkenny related increases year on year. We knew before we left our first Roots that we would be back the following year and attending the Roots has given us a large number of people that we can call our dear friends.

There are too many stories to tell in a letter but there is one I will pass on. We went to a pub a few times on our first year and on our first day back in 2005, a barman in the same pub asked if we were good and if we wanted ‘the usual’ and remembered exactly what we drank. Only in Kilkenny.

My love of all things Kilkenny is summed up when I got a taxi when in Dublin on a pre-Roots visit a few years ago and the driver asked where I was from and why I was in Ireland.

He knew that I was very excited about what I was planning and he asked what it was about Kilkenny. I replied that as I am getting older and was fretting that time was passing far too quickly, that I wanted to live as long as I could and while I was scared of passing, if Kilkenny was heaven, I would be cool with it.

I would like to thank Yvonne and John Dalton who have been so kind and generous to us, Brenda Hogan who takes me for a visit each year to see my late and dear friend, Willie Meighan, and everyone that we have met and who we are now so fortunate to call our friends.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you and Slainte.

Duncan C M Smith,
Stornoway,
Isle of Lewis