Yes! It bounces gleefully after the stone and brings it back. I feel guilty about the dog’s teeth, but we are both rather happy with our wholesome pastime, and when I climb the steps up the cliff it is with some regret.

Howth’s huge stone breakwater pier protects a marina where you can listen to buskers imitate Miles Davis badly or catch a small boat out to Ireland’s Eye, an island bird sanctuary. Erskine Childers and the Irish Volunteers smuggled rifles into Howth Harbour in July 1914—the weapons wielded in the doomed Easter Rising of 1916. Childers was later executed, not by the British but by former friends, one of many such perverse casualties during the Irish Civil War. Now the local fishboat traffic leans more to drug-running; the Celtic Tiger needs its pharmaceuticals.

Members of U2 own sumptuous homes around Howth. In the 1980s, my cousin and some of his mates met at the Summit pub every Thursday night for pints. One of the mates was Larry, U2’s drummer. Before the band’s 2005 concert in Dublin, my cousin was handed a free pass to a vip box and word was to not eat or drink before the show; all would be provided. Larry the drummer doesn’t forget his old pals from the Summit.

I love Howth and Dublin, but it is my belief that if you want to know the real Ireland (of course there is no real Ireland), then you must go west, push beyond The Pale. Dublin is overrun with Eurotrash, gridlocked bmws, and Botox addicts.

Way down in the southwest is Dingle Peninsula, my favourite corner of Ireland. You can’t get much farther out in the boonies. Swim due west from Dingle and you’ll hit Newfoundland. In fact Newfoundland’s trash sometimes drifts to Irish shores.

Inch is a small village on Dingle Bay. Grassy dunes rise behind you, and surf and open waters stretch west toward the Atlantic. Mountains and cliffs line the bay like a fjord, a primal misty landscape at times, mountains and sea and sky in those infinite washes of blue. People have lived on Inch’s stupendous beach—several kilometres long and flat as a gym floor—for thousands of years. Maybe Bronze Age hepcats surfed these breaks and combers.

I walk miles to the very end of this sandy hook and after the first stretch see hardly another footprint, no one but me tootling on my harmonica. No pier, no ferries, no Miami Vice cigarette boats, no Sea-Doos roaring and bucking, no traffic jams, no horns, no squealing brakes, no exhaust, no boom boxes, no cigar smokers, no emperors of ice cream. Inch belongs to a different, calmer world.

A spooky scene finds me down my beach: a pair of socks and two boots arranged neatly, facing the sea. A swimmer A lonely suicide Not a soul about. Stare out at the waves and no one there, no surfers. Wind from the sea fluting in my ears, I can hear sand move in the wind. A big dune behind me, a skinny desert jutting into sea; I expect jeeps out of The Rat Patrol or Michael Ondaatje. Empty socks and boots wait patiently. Where did that human go

This human makes his way to Foley’s, a roadside pub, for a fine evening. The bartender is named Martina, and Martina is married to Martin. I am travelling with my brother Martin; we just saw my cousin Martin in Dublin; my first son is named Martin; my favourite uncle was Marty, my great-grandfather Martin. We drink to that, we are welcome here, we have Martin-cred.Two pub locals, hearing we are Canucks, tell us of their love of The Band and especially the sad voice of the late Rick Danko.

And Richard Manuel’s sad voice!