I walked into an empty classroom at New College one morning to do some last-minute preparation, for a presentation I was giving in half an hour. Daniel walked in a bit later and told me he would need to use the room in ten minutes. We exchanged a few words as we both fussed with our papers. I forget now how we got there, but for some reason he quoted the opening of the Aeneid – “Arma virumque cano -” and I completed it – “Troiae qui primus ab oris,” like the good Latin student I had been in high school. He said he hadn’t heard anyone quote that passage in Latin in a long time. We talked a bit about our respective Latin studies, and introduced ourselves. When I heard he was Professor of Irish Studies, I asked him if he had ever heard the theory that much Jamaican/reggae slang comes from Gaelic words that had entered their language centuries earlier, when Irish immigrants and indentured servants settled in Jamaica. Forgetting about his papers, he walked up to the blackboard and for the next ten minutes, wrote down every Jamaican slang term I threw at him, and figured out its Gaelic origins. It was obvious to me that this was a man in love with language, with teaching, as well as with learning. It was an unexpected, brief but truly delightful and memorable encounter.