There was a dreamlike quality to our early morning passage across the velvet waters of Lake Lucerne following in the invisible wake of the craft that carried the last princes of Gaelic Ireland, Hugh O'Neill, Rory and Cahir O'Donnell, their families and servants to the small lakeside port of Fluelen where they disembarked around midnight on March 16th, 1608, writes Denis McClean.
The occasional loud commentary from the speakers on board our tourist vessel reminded us of another ancient national struggle, one played out on the shores of the Swiss Alpine lake involving William Tell and the Rutli Meadow where legend has it that the men of Uri, Schywz and Nidwaldner swore to fight the Habsburgs in 1291 and thus created the founding myth of the world's oldest democracy.
That was far from the mind of Vincent O'Donnell, a retired primary school teacher from the Rosses and the main mover behind the O'Donnell Clan Association which now has almost 20 years of quadricentennial events under its belt, related mainly to the Nine Years War and the Flight of the Earls.
As we talked, he summoned the photographer Rory O'Donnell over and asked him to pull up his shirt so I could admire a fine example of the "bol dearg", the red birthmark which gave Red Hugh O'Donnell his nickname and continues as a genetic marker among his descendants to this day.
We transferred to the bus which would carry us up into the mountains so we could cross The Devil's Bridge on foot.
The Gaelic scribe, Tadhg Ó Cianáin, who was on the original journey, has recorded how Hugh O'Neill on March 17th, 1608, lost a small fortune when one of his pack horses loaded with gold slipped on the bridge - an early lesson on the risks of putting all your money on one horse.
There was a quick drill for those carrying the tricolour, the O'Neill and O'Donnell flags and banners, and then we all fell in behind Vincent O'Donnell, the Irish Ambassador to Switzerland, James A Sharkey, and three actors in costume of the period from the Ouroboros Theatre Company, Denis Conway, Conan Sweeny and Tony Flynn.
With snowflakes, mist and the notes of the bagpipes swirling around us, thus began a very short St Patrick's Day parade over a deep canyon known as the Schöllenen Gorge at an altitude of 1,500 metres, and recorded for posterity by the assembled ranks of the Swiss media and Áine Ní Churráin from Raidió na Gaeltachta, who did a live broadcast from the bridge.
A green cloak was passed to Mr Sharkey as a symbol of the transition from Gaelic to modern Ireland, and 30 seconds of silence were observed in remembrance of the loss of the old Gaelic civilisation and the toll which the journey into exile took on the families who had left the pier at Rathmullan, Co Donegal, on that fateful September day in 1607, never to return.
The memory of the O'Donnell brothers, Rory and Cahir, who were to die the following year in Rome was evoked at a special St Patrick's Day Mass in the Church of St Peter and St Paul, Andermatt, by Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin's beautiful rendition of an achingly sad lament by the O'Donnell clan poet, Fearghal Óg Mac a'Bháird, which he wrote for their surviving sisters, Mary and Margaret.
The unexpected outpouring of Donegal Irish from the altar was almost too much for 86- year-old Michael O'Callaghan, who grew up in an Irish-speaking household in Gweedore and had journeyed up from Geneva where he spent most of his working life with the International Labour Organisation. "That's what old age does to you. The tears come easily," he smiled ruefully.
Just as Hugh O'Neill must have dearly missed the company of his dead friend and fellow-fighter, Red Hugh O'Donnell, on his Alpine journey, Mr Sharkey was forced to rise to the occasion without his good friend and fellow Derryman, the Nobel laureate John Hume, 'who sent his regrets for non-attendance due to a traffic accident.
Jim Sharkey, on his last diplomatic posting, took on the mantle of his fellow latter-day prince of Ulster and read out the speech John Hume had prepared for delivery in the small 13th century church dedicated to St Colombanus on the wayside of the centuries-old road which the Earls took as they climbed through the snow to the high St Gotthard Pass and then on into Italy.
Hume observed that the flight of the Earls brought to an end the old Gaelic civil order which had endured for 1,000 years and "heralded also a momentous century of change and conflict throughout Ireland, arising from the Plantation of Ulster by new settlers from Scotland and England, whose repercussions have resonated down to our time.
"Importantly, also, it symbolised the inauguration of a new and more intense phase of Irish engagement with Europe encapsulated succinctly and eloquently in the theme of our celebrations today, 'Droichead Idir Éireann agus An Eoraip' - 'A Bridge Between Ireland and Europe.' "
The Ambassador cut a fine figure in his green cloak as the snow fell on him and the many hardy souls who had made the journey including singer Paul Brady, Monaghan poet Pádraig Rooney, the Joycean scholar, Fritz Senn, the Zurich-based harpist, Catherine Rhatigan, and the entire cast of Brian Friel's Making History, a play inspired by Hugh O'Neill and specially revived by Ouroboros's artistic director, Denis Conway, as part of the Flight of the Earls 400th anniversary commemoration which is supported by Culture Ireland.
Before heading off to drown the shamrock in a nearby Swiss army barracks, all gathered round to admire the simple memorial hewn by local stonemasons from apple-green serpentine rock taken from a nearby quarry and embossed with a harp and the words "Imeacht na hEarlaí" (the flight of the Earls).
On the reverse side will be written in English, German and Latin "Here passed the last princes of Ireland."