There are no reports of Irish football fans actually waking the dead during the recent celebrations in Paris. But if they failed, it was not for want of trying. And they were unusually well placed to achieve such a feat.
Their unofficial headquarters, scene of nightly street parties involving several thousand people, was the Boulevard De Clichy, where three Irish pubs coincide. The proximity of The Harp and Corcoran's, in particular, became the focus of the "folie Irlandaise", as local papers put it.
But it so happens that those bars flank a short side street, Avenue Rachel, which is the main entrance to one of the three great burial grounds of Paris, the Cimetière de Montmartre.
Like the others, this one is notable for having at least one Irish exile among its celebrity residents. Montparnasse has Beckett. Père Lachaise has Wilde. But our man in Montmartre – paradoxically since its location means a high concentration of artists – is a soldier.
Born in Wexford in 1780, Myles Byrne fought in several major battles of 1798, when still a teenager. Then he took to the hills, and was involved with Emmet’s doomed rebellion, before fleeing to France. He continued military life there, now with Napoleon’s Irish Brigade.
But having survived all that, he died peacefully in Paris, decades later, aged 81. He is buried under a Celtic cross, with an inscription that translates: “Sincerely attached to Ireland, the land of his birth, he faithfully served France, his adopted country”.
I doubt if many of his compatriots visited him last week – the cemetery opens only in daytime. Even so, they may have paid a general mark of respect, in their own fashion. I’m thinking of the way the huge crowds, and the large quantities of beer they drank, led to certain inevitable consequences.
In the delicate word of an official from the arrondissement's mayoralty, a quiet side-street off the boulevard was transformed into a giant "pissotière" (a wall used for urinary purposes). But it was some relief, at least, to hear that the street in question was not Avenue Rachel. It was one opposite.
Pissotières apart, I am often struck in Paris by the contrast between its charming streets and the grisly history that lies beneath, sometimes hinted at in the names. There is a perfect example elsewhere in Montmartre, the Rue du Chevalier de la Barre.
Even if you've never heard it, you have almost certainly seen the street in films. It's a romantic cliché, most recently featured it that compilation of romantic clichés, Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, which used its steep steps, leading up to Sacré-Coeur Cathedral, as a set.
But behind the romance, the man whose name the street commemorates suffered a truly grim end, of which – by coincidence – today is a major anniversary.
Like Myles Byrne in 1798, de la Barre was still only a teenager at the time he became notorious. Unlike Byrne, however, he is not buried in Montmartre, nor anywhere, that being part of his punishment. In fact, the only reason he is commemorated there (by a statue as well as a street) is that he was victim of religious intolerance, so that later freethinkers deliberately enshrined him near the city’s most elevated church.
Born into aristocracy in 1745, he was by all accounts an irreverent young man, not unusual is those circles. But his exact crime (at a time when state law had a big religious element) was the subject of much misinformation, then and later.
He did not, for example, deface a crucifix at Abbeville in 1765, although that event contributed to the hysteria that engulfed him. He probably was one of a group who failed to take their hats off for a passing Corpus Christi procession, as Dickens mentions in A Tale of Two Cities. But other misdemeanours, including a fondness for lewd songs, told against him too.
Following his arrest, one of the things found in his room was Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary. This also became part of the punishment when, in February 1766, a court convicted him of blasphemy and sacrilege.
The sentence was confirmed on appeal in June. Then, as the judge recommended, he was first tortured, to get the names of accomplices. After that, they cut his tongue out (for the lewd songs) and then beheaded him, prior to burning the body and scattering his ashes. Voltaire’s dictionary accompanied him at the end. It was nailed to his torso as they were both consigned to a pyre on July 1st, 1766, 250 years ago today.