On March 19, 2019 in Belfast, Ray gave a talk at a lecture series on “Imperialism on Trial: the Role of the State.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_4YZp0TTSU
The sound system did not start functioning for Ray’s talk until minute 35:08, but Ray’s two preceding minutes were content-free. Ray used them in an attempt to follow Cicero’s dictum that one needs to be mindful of the need to render the audience “benevolent, attentive, and docile.”
So he started by quoting the wisdom of an old Irish American friend. Years ago, addressing the 4,000-plus men at the annual dinner of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in New York, Ray’s friend began with this:
“Looking out at you, well, you are the embodiment, the flesh-and-blood proof that, except for the ugly ones, the Irish are the most handsome race on the face of the earth.”
Ray then added the old saw about why the sun never sets on the British Empire. Sorry, if you don’t already know the answer to that, well, you’ll have to watch at least the first audible part of Ray’s talk starting at minute 35:08. (You won’t have to watch the following 24 minutes of Ray’s remarks, unless you want to.) At the end of his talk Ray makes an effort to lighten up the appropriately “dour” tone of the discussion of Imperialism, by reciting Yeats’s “Fiddler of Dooney.”