By Frank Smith, Ballincree, December 2024

Paddy Fox looked after the church and graveyard in Ballinacree. When I first knew him he lived with his aunt Maggie in an old cottage beside ours, located about 500 yards from the Ballinrink road or the ‘old road’ as most people referred to it. The old road was a busy thoroughfare sometimes seeing two or three cars a day, numerous tractors, a couple of horses and carts, and a dozen bicycles, not to mention Jack Balfe’s three cows that walked the road twice a day for milking. Yes, that road was a busy place; Larry Manley’s heifer grazed the ‘long acre’ there too. My father and Paddy also brought their milk cans to the old road for collection for the creamery by Pat-Joe Cullen.


Now Paddy also fancied himself as a skilled tradesman, who specialized in construction. He also tried his hand at electrical work. One day he borrowed a double adapter from my father – that’s the device that you can insert into the light bulb holder and then you can install the bulb into this adapter plus another cable for a second appliance usually a pig lamp or an Infra red lamp used to keep a litter of young pigs or a clutch of day-old chicks warm. Shortly afterwards on a nice summers evening, I was walking up the lane when I met Paddy, a man of few words. Without uttering a syllable he hands me the double adapter. Not knowing what this thing was or why I was handed such a device I decided that it was some sort of present from Paddy, for my birthday perhaps or just because I was a good ‘gasún’. It looked like an interesting item that might well have a ‘spinner’ or a magnet inside. I tried to open it with my penknife but in the end I had to resort to using a good-sized stone. To my disappointment, it only contained a few brass bits and no magnets, wheels or gears. Some days later my father asked me if Pat Fox had given me anything. I’m afraid that was when the whole disappointing episode came out. I think my father understood when I said that Paddy had given it to me without a word. Did he think I was a mind reader or what? 


Now Paddy wasn’t what you’d call an early riser. As my mother would say she had half a days work done when Paddy rolled out of bed in the morning. On the other hand, Paddy often headed to the “Ranch” (his farm in Ballinrink) at six in the evening to cock hay after a day in the Floods quarry where he worked occasionally. Normally he opened the church before attending to his other activities on the farm or in Floods. On a couple of occasions though Fr Troy the parish priest, arrived at the church only to find it was still locked. He would then journey up the road in his Morris Minor and then down our lane to Paddy’s house for the key. He would knock on Paddy’s door for a couple of minutes, but Paddy would lie low until he heard the Morris head back out the lane, its owner still empty handed. Then Paddy would hot foot it across our “Well” field, over a stile into ‘Mary Ann’s,’ (now Peter Smiths) and from there, to the church. By the time Fr. Troy arrived back Paddy had the Church open and the situation under control, with minimum loss of face.


Paddy believed in the banshees and he often recounted the times he witnessed one in our field. She was, he said, dressed fully in a black cloak, her face always hidden and always took the same route, down the lane from the old road towards his house but halfway she would take to the ‘middle field’, then the ‘well field’ and head in the direction of the well. He was of the opinion that she was the spirit of someone that had died of drowning either in the well or in a nearby bog-hole

On a more serious note though I have to say that Paddy was as good a neighbour as anybody could wish for, despite his idiosyncrasies. My mother often retold the story of the night that I as a two-year-old was very ill and needed medical attention urgently. For some reason, my father wasn’t around and with three other small children, all under five my mother was stuck. Without a word, Paddy threw his leg over his bike and pedaled off on this wet and wintery night to get the doctor for me. For that, I will be forever grateful. Paddy died in 2000.

May he rest in peace.

One day in 2000 Pat Fox left his house and walked to Katsie Brown’s shop, He never returned. For well over a year after his death, his faithful dog Kitty scanned the road every day from early morning until dark hoping for his return.