For a brief moment, the sound of a Vienna waltz came over the airways for the 40,000 or so people thronged on a small hill in north Cork for day two of the National Ploughing Championships.
It was as if to suggest a spontaneous mass dance would gently guide them across the mud sea and uplift their woes. Ploughing, after all, may be a calm and unheated competitive activity, but is known to generate passion.
For most of the morning, unrelenting showers made conditions under foot decidedly worse. Those attending did participate in a dance of sorts coinciding with the arrival of every downpour - a collective jump into the nearest trade stand.
Many were not sure if their cars would extricate themselves from sodden fields by evening, but at dawn the organisers, anticipating the weather's lack of mercy, were rounding up hordes of able-bodied men from surrounding parishes and kitting them out with tow ropes.
A man who ploughed in the championships 50 years ago, Edward Dowse of Carnew, Co Wicklow, was best placed to give the "mud ratings". It was worse than every one since - bar Enniskerry, which was so wet he does not want to remember when that was.
The twice under-21 national champion with horses believes trouble this year came beforehand as hurricane aftershocks in the form of often torrential rain. It was wet and muddy before a single furrow was cut out of the Castletownroche soil. Tractors were spinning in the mud and horses looked better equipped for the job, but star performers were still coming to the top, said the senior plot supervisor. "Looking around, it's easy to know where the good job is done."
No Irish person could be forgiven for coming ill-equipped for the occasion, but you could not reprimand 26 students from France who came to learn about marketing French food abroad and set up a stand loaded with wines, honey, brioches and goat's cheese.
They wore smart suits and their best shoes, explained their lecturer, Ms Marie Claude Vouillon of the Academy of Poitiers. They quickly availed of the opportunity to dress down and purchased 26 pairs of wellington boots from a stand next door.
As for farmers, they are nothing if not stoical. The one who said, "it is so bad it'd nearly make you cry", got it right. His tone suggested resignation, but not yet despair. By afternoon, however, the sun was in the ascendancy and banter reached new heights; enough to imply they did not give a damn about finding a way home.