It was the social event of the season, a night to remember for the society ladies of Kilkenny . . . but only if they managed to fill all 21 lines on their engagement cards.
April 26th, 1935, was the date, the North Kilkenny Hunt Fund Dance the occasion, and Swift's Heath, the reputed childhood home of Jonathan Swift, the venue.
As Major H.H. Watt and his United Hunt Band struck up the first tune, a foxtrot called Pink Elephants, any young woman who hadn't filled her card at least to the 12th dance (a waltz, No, No, a Thousand Times No) - was probably in a state of panic.
You don't need an engagements card to visit Swift's Heath, in Jenkinstown, near Kilkenny city, today; just a phone call in advance to Brigitte Lennon to check that there's a room available will remove any cause for panic right away.
Otherwise, though, you may find that things at Swift's Heath are still pretty much the same as they were in 1935, or indeed in the 1670s, when a young Jonathan Swift almost certainly spent his free time in the house then owned by his uncle Godwin, who was paying for his education at Kilkenny College.
The house remained in the Swift family until 1970, when it was bought by Brigitte, who is German, and her Irish husband, Michael. It needed extensive restoration, says Ms Lennon, who now runs it as a bed and breakfast, but one from a bygone era of antiques and stately grandeur.
The most striking thing about a visit to Swift's Heath is its informality. Brigitte greets visitors like long-lost friends; a planned half-hour visit by The Irish Times took about six times as long, and included a double serving of goulash which was just too good to turn down.
But the most remarkable thing of all is that Swift's Heath, despite its distinctive character, is by no means unique; the south-east is dotted all over with country homes, many of historic interest, where bed and breakfast is available for moderate prices and the personal attention of the hosts is guaranteed.
You might call them Ireland's best-kept secret, but the news is spreading. Sherwood Park House, run by Paddy and Maureen Owens, near Ballon, Co Carlow, was the subject last year of a review in the New York Times which any five-star hotel manager would kill for.
"My wife, Sung-Hey, and I awoke in an elegant Georgian manor," wrote Scott Burris in the paper's travel section. "Downstairs, at the end of a table that could easily sit 25, one of our hosts, Maureen Owens, was laying out smoked local salmon, scrambled eggs from her own hens and fresh-baked scones."
When Paddy Owens drove the couple to Clonegal where they planned to begin walking the Wicklow Way, "good conversation persisted so vigorously that Pat drove us out of the village again and a mile along Wicklow Way before we could actually stop the car and start the walk".
Swift's Heath and Sherwood Park are just two of the 31 homes in the south-east featured in the latest Friendly Homes of Ireland brochure, a compendium of about 140 "charming family homes and small hotels" around the country, north and south of the Border. About 100 are considered to be of historic interest.
Such homes, many of which are also featured in other guides, such as the Hidden Ireland and Irish Farmhouse Bed and Break- fast brochures, form a growing section of the tourist accommodation market in the region and elsewhere.
Waterford Tourism's chief executive, Monica Leech, says that while some people prefer the relative anonymity of staying in a hotel, for others it means "an awful lot" to stay with families who have occupied the same home for generations or can give an account of its history.
Another attraction is that each home is so different from the next. Cullintra House, for example, run by Patricia Cantlon near Inistioge, Co Kilkenny, is described in the Friendly Homes brochure as a "cat-lovers' paradise", where breakfasts are served until midday. Dinner, apparently, never ends before midnight.
Ms Bernadette Monaghan of Horetown House in Foulksmills, Co Wexford, a 300-year-old manor house with equestrian centre and Egon Ronay-listed restaurant attached, says its out-of-the-way location means you "have to advertise a lot more and work a lot harder [than those in more prominent locations] to get your name known". Sherwood Park, for example, has its own website. No Friendly Homes brochure is ever the same as the previous one. Mr John Colclough of Tourism Resources Ltd, which publishes the brochure every year, points out that as some are sold to new owners who discontinue the B & B business, others come forward which meet the required standards of cleanliness, friendliness, food and character.
"A `wow factor' is required in at least one of these," he says.
This year the south-east has lost, in B & B terms, Clohamon House in Bunclody, Co Wexford, but in its place have come some gems, such as Sion Hill House in Ferrybank, Waterford; the Old Deanery in Ferns, Co Wexford, and Woodbrook, a picturesquely set Georgian house near Enniscorthy run by Alexandra and Giles Fitzherbert, a former British ambassador to Venezuela.
If they want to know what to expect in their new venture, Brigitte Lennon in Swift's Heath has the low-down on the different nationalities and what they bring to a home: "Irish people will come late, stay up late and get up late. The Germans will come in all bustling and efficiency, early, go to bed early, get up early and leave early."
But the real differences are apparent only after the guests have gone. "You would find that Germans leave their rooms spotless, the French are also quite nice and neat, the Irish leave the rooms in absolute disaster and the Americans leave the bathroom in disaster - other than that they are tidy enough!"
The Friendly Homes of Ireland brochure, priced £1, is published by Tourism Resources Ltd, PO Box 2281, Dublin 4. Website: www.tourismresources.ie
