Annotation:Cul Doras Highland

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CUL DORAS HIGHLAND (The Back Door Highland). Irish, Highland. Ireland, County Donegal. The story of the title's origins comes from Vincent Campbell via Caoimhin Mac Aoidh (1994). It seems that poitin distilling was at one time kept very secretive in parts of Ireland. A wedding was held in a house in the Graffey area of Donegal, and the groom and father-in-law wanted to keep the festivities low-key, and contrived to put the alcoholic mixture into crockery bottles instead of big kegs, and to store them in the lime kiln at the rear of the house. He even let on that he was going to burn the lime kiln and had turf stacked around it to make the story plausible. Being a fiddler the father-in-law arranged with his sons that when the whiskey was running short in the kitchen during the wedding festivities he would play a certain tune and this would be the signal for the sons to go out the back to fetch another poitin bottle from its hiding place in the kiln. To this day the tune he played bears the title "An Cul Doras," the back door.

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