The Last Straw: Irish language revivalists should take heart from the fate of traditional music. Not long ago, it was nearly dead. Now, as visitors to Miltown Malbay this week will know, it's thriving.
This town in west Co Clare is sometimes called the trad musician's "Mecca", which is a bit of an overstatement - pipers and fiddlers around the globe are not required to face Miltown when they play (unless they're really devout). But the able-bodied are expected to make the pilgrimage for the annual Willie Clancy Summer School, and many come a long way.
The music was still on life support when the school started 33 years ago. A measure of the progress made since is that you'd be reluctant to pick up an instrument in a pub here these days unless you had a recording contract behind you. An occasional whistle player attending his 33rd school struck an almost plaintive note when he told me: "The standard's gone very high." But success has not come at too high a price. Regional fiddle styles have survived, somehow. Fears that the east Clare and west Clare styles would be amalgamated in favour a regional centre of excellence, based in Ennis, have so far proved unfounded.
"Willie Week" in Miltown reflects the changing times. There's a street stall this year devoted to plastic wristbands, for example. But New Age travellers are conspicuously absent and - it may not be an unrelated development - the number of bodhráns in music sessions is well down. It's too early to call the total demise of the goat-skinned percussion instrument - which, like bovine TB, keeps coming back despite all attempts to discourage it. Even so, purists will hope eradication is finally in sight, and that it can be achieved without drastic measures, such as wiping out the goat population.
The event also demonstrates the resounding success of the smoking ban. Traditional musicians are hard cases in many ways, but the respect for the ban is total. In the doorway of Cogan's bar, a sign even warns customers: "It is illegal to smoke in this porch. Please stand well out in the street!" This is harsh advice and, in practice, most smokers compromise by standing on the footpath. Which is just as well, given the way they drive in these parts.
It's unfair to generalise, of course, because there are regional driving styles too. The west Clare style is relaxed, almost jaunty, whereas driving in east Clare is more intense. But use of the indicator does not seem to be an important part of either tradition.
The driving may in turn be influenced by the state of Clare's roads, which were apparently designed during a series of improvisational workshops held in bars. There's one notorious spot between Miltown and Mullagh where the hedgerow suddenly dives into the road like a fiddler's elbow, reducing the left-hand lane to about half the width of your car. The effect is especially dramatic at night.
But back to the summer school, which really is a school. Even the recitals in the community hall, where a different instrument is showcased nightly, should not be mistaken for mere concerts. Students attend to learn from the masters and - in the case of the uilleann pipes - the masters themselves are still learning. For pipe players, life is one long, epic struggle to stay in tune. The instrument looks like something that was caught in the sea and is still alive. Whether the musician will get the better of it, or vice versa, adds to the drama of every performance. Wednesday's recital resulted in a narrow win for the pipers.
Of course many people go to Miltown just for the set-dancing, which is all right if you like that sort of thing. Unfortunately, in common with many men, I suffer from a condition by which mere proximity to a dance floor causes nausea. The condition can be controlled through medication (five or six pints, taken beforehand), but as a rule, I try to avoid known risk factors, such as posters featuring the word "Céilí". Even so, on a flying visit to the main step-dancing venue, I was impressed by the sheer spectacle - not to mention noise - of hundreds of hard shoes hammering the floor in unison.
The key sound of Willie Week is a quieter one, however. You can often hear it at the recitals, during classes, or in the tiny pubs of Miltown. It's the soft, rhythmic thud of feet against floorboards, as performers and listeners keep time with the music. If you listen hard, you'll pick it up under the sound of the instruments: a constant thud-thud-thud, like the restored heartbeat of a music that once nearly died. Either that, or it's those damned bodhrán players again.