In their flat caps and old wax jackets they looked very different from the Dubliners who looked at them with suspicion as thousands of farmers flooded into Phoenix Park at the start of yesterday's protest.
They were defiant and angry. They would march in defence of their income. It was their capital city as much as it belonged to Dubliners. Some building workers dismissed them as just "a bunch of whingeing farmers".
Bernie Malone MEP was a particular hate figure. She favoured "rural apartheid" by saying that farmers should stay out of Dublin, according to one poster.
For the farmers they were about something more serious than inconveniencing Dubliners. They were concerned about the defence of a way of life.
Neelie O'Leary, who lives near Bantry, farms sheep on the mountains of west Cork. His income is down. Young farmers are not going into the business. The land is going to the forestry or foreigners. The EU must recognise the importance of keeping farmers on the land, otherwise "the countryside will go wild and everyone around me will move to Bantry".
Anne Murphy from Bellmount, Co Offaly, said her children were not going into farming. "They saw their father out in all weathers, working for nothing."
Pat Frost from Sixmilebridge, Co Clare, took the long historical view. The farmers got the land from the landlords in the land wars. Then during the economic war the county councils tried to take the land, and now it was Brussels.
As the thousands of farmers lined the main road in the Phoenix Park, Rickard Deasy looked on from the side-lines. In 1966 he led a major farmers' demonstration in Dublin as the head of the National Farmers' Association. The farmers walked to Dublin to take part in that event.
Phoenix Park was like All-Ireland day. Fathers with children stood around eating sandwiches. The kids carried banners asking, "What about my future?" The IFA's assistant general secretary, Bryan Barry, drove up and down shouting orders through a loud speaker. IFA officials spoke to the huge media corps, while farmers queued outside an RTE van to speak, live, to Pat Kenny.
Some 400 coaches and two special trains had brought the farmers to Dublin.