I suppose ‘keeping it in the family’ was very important long ago. This was especially so when it came to money, land, and power.

Amazing, isn’t it, that decades - even centuries - after an event happening, the repercussions can still reverberate down the corridors of time.

Over the weekend, echoes of 1998, yes, and 1798, and even the 1600s dominated the news in this small country of ours.

The ‘will we, won’t we - yes ye can, no ye can’t’ stand-off at the Garvaghy Road in Armagh showed clearly how incidents, skirmishes, and battles of long, long ago can cast a long shadow.

As tension mounted, fears of sectarian conflict flaring up once more became a sobering reality.

Listening to voices from both sides, I thought to myself - oh, how lucky we are down here. What’s the value of peace - it’s a priceless jewel really!

They say the course of a river can change over thousands of years - look at the odd ‘turn’ in the Blackwater near Cappoquin. Lads, I do often surmise and peruse the what-ifs and maybes of times gone by.

I think it was Lord Acton who wrote the now famous words: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely” - in fairness, the same man knew a thing or two about power and influence. His father, Richard, as they used to say, ‘married well’ when he wooed and wed a Miss Marie Louise Pelline, a daughter of no less a man than the 1st Duke of Dalberg in Frankfurt -they invented the sausage and did well out of it too.

The Duke worked for Napoleon Bonaparte as a soldier, ambassador, and bloodstock agent. I heard the very old people around here saying that they heard from their own ancestors that the Duke of Dalberg was actually the man who came over from France to........

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