"My granny would be spinning in her grave if she could see this," said one onlooker as she took in the unusual view of Gerry Adams leaving a Methodist funeral service for a loyalist icon in unionist east Belfast.
Shaking hands with the bereaved, Adams was accompanied by former Sinn Féin lord mayor Alex Maskey amid a line of the great and good from nationalist and Catholic Ireland.
They were all there, from Albert Reynolds to the SDLP front bench to Fr Aidan Troy. The Dáil, Seanad and Cabinet were all well represented as was the Department of Foreign Affairs. There were TDs, Senators, Ministers and senior Government officials.
They rubbed shoulders with their opposite numbers from Westminster, among them lords, ladies, MPs, knights of the realm and more ministers. Peter Hain, Lord Trimble, Peter Robinson, Lady Sylvia Hermon and Sir Reg Empey mingled easily outside the East Belfast Mission, the strongly loyalist area's Methodist church.
Gerry Adams emerged into the watery sunlight and chatted easily for a time before sidestepping his way through the crowds to his car.
Outside the distinctly unglamorous brick building hundreds of men, black-tied, watched and did nothing. It was as if the Troubles had never happened. Uniformed PSNI officers stood by, like the men in black, in an atmosphere of total normality.
The ordinariness of it all was striking.
More than 1,000 had gathered outside the church just a short distance from David Ervine's modest constituency office and even more modest Chamberlain Street where he was raised. It was also not too far from the spot where Ervine, then a UVF member, had been arrested transporting a bomb.
But this was a day for celebrating what David Ervine had become rather than recalling what he once did.
"The family want a celebration, not a dour service," said the Rev Gary Mason as he introduced a memorial which was at turns uplifting and poignant, punctuated by buoyant music, laughter and bursts of applause.
Mark Ervine, the eldest son, spoke movingly of the "altogether immense man" that was his father. Brian Ervine, the brother, eyed the congregation and was thankful that those thought of as "traditional enemies" were side by side.
He called on them to strive for David's optimistic ideal of peaceful co-existence in place of mutual slaughter.
Dawn Purvis, David's right- hand woman in the Progressive Unionist Party, painted vivid word pictures of her friend's office with its piles of literature standing around like the pillars of the Giant's Causeway. She recalled how he urged loyalists to win friends and influence people. "Boy, has he done that," she said.
Monica McWilliams, once leader of the Women's Coalition and a member of the Assembly, commended his "lust for peace" and his hatred of sexism and racism and intolerance.
The tributes continued from Peter Hain and from former Presbyterian moderator Ken Newell.
Outside in the wind, the crowds gazed on the spectacle of the Chief Constable and the Sinn Féin president and the other "traditional enemies" of politics mingling easily as the lone piper struck up Abide with Meand the men in black fell into rank.
The heavy coffin was borne slowly from the church and off through the heartlands.