MONAGHAN and Cavan people will assure you they are two distinct and different species, as alike as wallabies and seals. But what actually divides them are merely those differences you find between close kin, and the kinship is to be measured in what they have most in common - their enterprise - they do not complain, they do not whine, they do not call for more grants.
Some people say it is the influence of Protestant Ulster which causes this self reliance and industry; which hardly explains the absence of those qualities within certain areas of Northern Ireland.
Monaghan, for example, has some of the poorest land in Ireland, it is unfortunately located along a bloodily disputed border, and largely has no natural resources. As a tourist venue, it is not causing sleepless nights in Thailand.
Its beaches have yet to be located. Its sun is intermittent, and seldom raises palm trees above ground. The Gulf Stream is at its weakest here. The coral reefs of Monaghan are a negligible quantity. Not even its most lurid laureates are moved to compare it to Hawaii.
Hard Times
Surfers waiting with their boards to ride the white rollers on Carrickmacross's sealess shores must learn patience. All in all, what Monaghan has, Monaghan must make, in luck as in all matters.
And it has been a hard quarter of a century or so for the county, and not least for those whose melancholy duty it is to make Castle Leslie turn a penny or two to pay for its keep. Big houses such as Castle Leslie are good ideas for Saudi princes, and not bad ideas for most us to spend an idle weekend in, and coming over all languid and Bridesheadian - what ho, Bertie, care for a spot of croquet, what?
Fantasy over, we return to our small and comfortable homes where draughts are a game played on a black and white board, and bedrooms are not deep freezes with a single bar electric fire glowing sulkily in the corner.
Sammy Leslie knows all too well about the truth of a big house like Castle Leslie. Yes, it is beautiful, and set amongst the most beautiful woodlands and overlooking one of the most enchanting loughs in Ireland; but such things, like racing stables and ocean going yachts, have to be paid for.
Castle Leslie sucks up cash as a vacuum cleaner inhales dust. Its vast Gothic roof is in fact a device for distributing internal heat to Monaghan at large. Those great stone floors could extinguish the fires of hell without breaking into a sweat.
And the vast windows can lose money faster than a group from Alcoholic Gamblers Anonymous cutting lose on a daytrip in Las Vegas.
Castle Leslie has been kept going by furious energy and courage over the troubled decades, it has served as a hotel and as a equestrian centre, and Sammy has somehow or other contrived to keep the place together.
Experiments in Cryogenics
She has even managed to renovate the rooms and warm them for paying guests, without turning them into early experiments in cryogenics. Her latest venture is a Gourmet Circle for Monaghan, using largely food produced in the county and wines, thankfully, which are not.
The heart does not lift at the thought of Chateau Hackballscross, and lies still in its bed at the mention of Scotstown Cabernet Sauvignon and refuses to leave it. Wise old heart.
Yet Monaghan does produce most of the other ingredients for a banquet, such as the one Sammy plans for the opening night of the Castle Leslie Gourmet Circle. Permit me a few column inches to regale you with canapes of yakatori mushrooms, quail, smoked duck and something called Others to be decided.
Dinner will consist of quail eggs set in consomme, warm salad with smoked duck in citrus vinaigrette, mushroom soup, timbale of Glaslough pike on a bed of spinach, pear sorbet, chicken crepenettes with lardons, croutons and mushrooms, marriage of venison or pheasant and turkey, with orange and cranberry jus and turnip gratin, trio of desserts of yoghurt with ice cream and red berry coulis, petit pot de creme with praline, and blackberry cobblers, plus tea and coffee, and not a drop of Sauvignon Blanc de Ballybay to be seen. Instead, every course will be accompanied by a different wine from Woodford Bourne.
Why all this space for a gourmet circle? Two reasons. One, everybody benefits, as Kinsale has shown and others have since discovered, by an improvement in culinary standards. Two, Castle Leslie has been home to one of the most bizarre and unpredictable families in Irish history.
An early Leslie, a bishop, married a woman about forty years younger than he, and proceeded to father about a dozen children before he dropped the mitre, aged one hundred.
One might jest about Monaghan wines, but in the last century, the Leslie greenhouses, produced vast amounts of exotic fruit - a Chateau Leslee would have been then perfectly acceptable.
Flying Spitfires
The Leslies were among the few landed families to come out ardently for Home Rule, at a time when it was not socially fashionable for them to do so, and even became Catholics, for whatever reason. More recently, one Leslie spent five years in a German prisoner of war camp and another flew Spitfires. Both, happily, are with us still, alive and no doubt intending to emulate the bishop in the longevity stakes, though not, Sammy is probably the first to wish, in the paternity stakes.
One can have too much of a good thing, even when that good thing is a Leslie. The only thing certain about the tribe is its complete uncertainty about what it will do next.
A question, though, and one I will be coming back to soon. No doubt the wines consumed in Castle Leslie will be lawful and duty paid. But how many people in the Border counties actually buy their wine in the Republic? How much money is given over to the British Exchequer every year because of our punitive, idiotic alcohol duties'?
Several friends from Britain came on holiday this summer with their cars stuffed with enough wine to last them their visit. The time has come - we must harmonise alcohol duties. It is costing us money, and tourists.