In a Clare pub that was still open this week, I overheard two men lament one of the many that have closed.
They alluded to some family tension over the decision to sell the licence, and one of the men feared the former proprietor would badly miss the company. "I was thinking it would be a good place for a shebeen," the speaker said.
"We could go round and play music there anyway. Just bring our own drink." I was tempted to point out to him that, if they were bringing their own drink, the premises could hardly qualify as a "shebeen" - which is an establishment where alcohol is sold illegally. The technical term for the arrangement he was describing was "a party in someone's house". But since I was eavesdropping, I thought better of saying anything.
Besides, the lines get a bit blurred with Irish drinking establishments sometimes - especially during music festivals, when the euphemism "public house" is reunited with its origins.
Overwhelmed by the influx of visitors during Willie Clancy week, for example, the tiny pubs of Miltown Malbay have to throw the kitchen sink - almost - into the effort to cope. Certainly the rest of the kitchen is deployed, along with the living-room. Only the sleeping quarters remain off-limits to strangers.
Even the front rooms of pubs mix the public and private. Family photographs and souvenirs mingle there with posters of "The Music Pubs of Clare" and mirrors inscribed with the names of distilleries.
But the front rooms are not for the faint-hearted during Willie Week. So in one typical venue on Wednesday night, I hovered instead in the back doorway of the family home listening to a session in the packed kitchen, while behind me, a group of Croatians stood smoking in the biergarten, formerly the patio.
It's hard to imagine at such times the crisis that the Vintners Federation claims is closing a pub a day in Ireland, with Clare the worst affected county.
In the 51 weeks of the year when the summer school is not on, however, Miltown Malbay must have many pubs where the front room is empty, never mind the kitchen. As I left the session on Wednesday, a dense sea-fog blanketed the town, and the Lahinch Road was as bleak as November, before the Christmas lights go up. Suddenly it wasn't so hard to imagine what it's like when the summer crowds have gone.
It should be noted in passing that the combined effect of the smoking ban, stricter drink-driving laws, and competition from retailers is not the first or biggest crisis ever to hit rural pubs. The so-called "spirit groceries", a few of which are still dotted around the country, are reminders of an even greater crisis: the rise of the temperance movement.
In the 19th century, this forced drinking houses to diversify into selling food, hardware, and other household goods. At its height, the phenomenon gave rise to that now-faded icon of rural Ireland, the one-stop-shop pub, where you could do everything from buying cornflakes to arranging your funeral, all over a pint. The spirit grocery was ubiquitous, eventually, until the rise of supermarkets gradually drove pubs back to drink.
The private nature of the Irish public house is nowhere more obvious than in the sign over the door. Pub signs are far less elaborate here than in England, where the feature has long outlived a 14th-century law - requiring every innkeeper to hang a sign or "forfeit his ale" - to become an art form.
The British pictorial pub sign, itself a throwback to a time when most people were illiterate, illustrates the business's name, which is typically colourful and sometimes eccentric. It is rarely personal, unless paying tribute to the aristocracy. Often it is nonsensical, like the "Goat and Compasses" - a corruption, it is assumed, of "God encompasseth us".
By complete contrast, the names of Irish pubs are as unadorned as their signs. They just identify the owner - not always the current one, admittedly. Probably the most famous pub in Miltown Malbay - the one where Willie Clancy himself used to play - is Friel's. But, just to keep outsiders on their toes, the sign on the premises says only "Lynch".
This is another place where the distinction between public house and private is pleasantly confused. Whether you're in the front lounge or the parlour, you feel at home, albeit in someone else's. But Friel's was just a little less cosy than usual this week, now that the last of the pubs that once lined the Ennis Road, around the corner, has closed. In the war between the new Ireland and its old pubs, the front line has moved to Miltown's main street, where Friel's is now the first line of defence.
The pretence behind the term "public house", traditionally, was that it was really a private house where the owner just happened to have a busy social life. He threw a party every day. And you were always invited, even if he'd never met you before. Now maybe, as the "shebeen" man suggests, some of Ireland's de-licensed premises will be kept alive by having actual guests.
The guests will bring their own drink and sit in the same place they used to, chatting to their friend, the former bartender. Everybody will pretend the business is still open; except that since it's not, they'll be free to smoke, just like in the old days. Strangers passing the closed front door will wonder at the ghostly laughter or music inside. Soon, perhaps, such venues will become known as "spirit pubs".