This year's Easter tide across the Foyle from Northern Ireland no doubt carried the usual rich mix of Donegal-lovers. The county may be neglected by official Dublin, as many natives insist. For many to the east, it has always been a magnet. A few are winter visitors, but Easter opens cafes and bars shuttered since October.
Donegal makes what money it can in sharp bursts, as uncertain as the coastal shifts between rain and sunshine. The county is to Belfast what Kerry or west Cork are to Dublin, mountains, sea and wilderness a powerful lure. The extra kick is that accessibility and lovely scenery come wrapped in almost exotic strangeness: a quality of foreignness.
Rubbish, chime all types of nationalist, how could it be foreign? This is their country too, they protest, trotting out what Irish they possess or citing the great-granny from Gortahork, vehemence in direct proportion to the lift in spirit most feel crossing the Border.
The odd thing, or maybe not odd at all, is that Donegal-loving Northern Protestants admit to the same relaxation once out of the North. Around Letterkenny or Burnfoot the tribes lose their distinct, potentially hostile markings. Westward-bound Northerners slide quietly past each other into their own favoured quarters of big, endlessly various Donegal, one part distanced from another for years by potholed roads and bog.
Bad Northern habits are pushed to the back of the mind. People from irritable Belfast, tiny intermarried Derry, uptight towns and watchful divided countryside, switch off their internal alarm systems. The coast's deep inlets have a history of sanctuary, Lough Swilly famously sheltering the British grand fleet in the first World War when it fled Scapa Flow. But Donegal has a strong republican strand: IRA fugitives were loathed by some, sustained by more. Today's west Belfast republicans are at home in their summer settlements.
A slice out of several generations trekked repeatedly to the Gaeltacht to learn Irish (some still do), lodged with families who 30 years ago were poor in a way uncommon in the North. Gaeltacht summers turned some off the language but enchanted others: first holiday without parents, first kisses in seaside twilight. Donegal is still Rest and Recreation. It worked through the worst years, and it works more surely now. Not even a month after the murder of Denis Donaldson near Glenties, the will to push its horror out of mind is almost tangible. In any case, there may be as much difference between the remote countryside around Glenties and the busy coastal strip around Downings as between working-class Falls and swish Malone, between those who head for the modest pleasures of Irish-speaking Gweedore and those bound for the surfing beaches of Rossnowlagh, or for Bunbeg, retreat for Gay Byrne and increasingly expensive.
Some have a mind to the investment value of a derelict shell bought and improved, a shining bungalow built from scratch for something between €200,000 to €300,000.
Others, in modestly renovated houses with extended family, staggering their visits, want less. "We have a phone," says a long-time Donegal fan, "we have central heating and a beach. You can't see the house from the road. There's absolutely nothing to do but walk and read. That's why we're here."
Northern Protestants who love the county would probably tend to be liberal unionist, if they admit to any label. They also tend to stay clear of the Gaeltacht, or the possibility of spotting Gerry Adams over a pint. Northern families with local Presbyterian and Church of Ireland roots used to arrive each summer at Rathmullan's modest Pier Hotel, now demolished. But once prominent unionists such as the late Jim Kilfedder and Ernie Baird looked back with very mixed emotions on their Donegal origins, and the exodus at partition, and stayed away. Local folklore entrenches an image of the county's Protestants as reserved, polite, a wary small minority.
There was a time when Derry people of modest means headed the westward charge, often making for the ramshackle huts that dotted the land from Border to sea. Caravans still cater for the less well-off, but even down-market Buncrana has priced up.
Ads in the Irish News, Belfast's Catholic daily, reflect the changes: "Buncrana, Co Donegal - holiday home, five minutes' walk town centre . . . Gweedore - Brand new cottage, sleeps 8-10 . . . Rathmullan - luxury three-bedroom house . . . Letterkenny - B&B, luxury, award-winning accommodation with en suite rooms." The traditional fan base for the top left-hand corner of the island has a new-rich layer of weekenders, who eat and drink in restaurants with rooms or small "foodie" hotels, with no anxieties about bills.
Local people smile politely, for the most part, and welcome the Easter tide.
Theirs is a fragile tourism, a marginal economy. Northern visitors might have too many carry-outs or provisions from Sainsbury's, but they are still a sight for sore eyes.