The late Paddy Heaney - locals mourn the loss of a "great community person"

The very sad news came through last week that we had lost Paddy Heaney. Living in Cadamstown all his life, Paddy was known far and wide for his energy, his enthusiasm and his love for the history of the region. 
  Paddy died on Friday, the 29th of April, peacefully, at Birr Community Nursing Unit.
  He was predeceased by his parents and sisters Josie, Molly, Helen and Tess. Paddy will be sadly missed by his sister Madge (UK), and especially his nieces Elizabeth and Bernadette in Cadamstown, and his nieces and nephews in the UK, brother-in-law Pete, cousins, relatives, neighbours and his many great friends.
  The tributes have been pouring in. "I’m saddened to hear of the passing of a great man," said Deputy Carol Nolan, "our local historian Paddy Heaney who passed away on Friday night. Paddy was a great man who loved history and the Irish language and who did so much for our local area. Ar Dheis Dé go raibh a anam, ní bheidh a léithead arís ann!"
"Sad to hear of the death of  Paddy Heaney," said Christina Byrne from Kinnitty. "Paddy was a great community  person and did so much for his local village Cadamstown, Kinnitty and the Slieve Bloom Mountains. He had a great love for all things Slieve Bloom - songs, local history, heritage and environment, to name but a few. He welcomed many guests from all over the world to his home who came in search of their roots and always had time to sit down and chat to them. He guided many walks in the Slieve Blooms, was a great storyteller and took part with another well known local historian Paddy Lowry in  the Slieve Bloom Storytelling festival for many years. He was a member of the Slieve Bloom Co-Operative Society and the Slieve Bloom Association. Paddy will be greatly missed. Ar dheis de go raibh a hanam."
  "We are sorry to hear of the death of Paddy Heaney," said Offaly History, "late of Cadamstown and the genius loci of the place. He and the late Paddy Lowry did so much for the heritage and tourism of Slieve Bloom. Our sympathy to his family and friends. They will long be remembered."
Paddy's remains reposed at his residence on Sunday the 1st of May from 2pm until Rosary at 8pm. Funeral Mass took place on Monday at 12 noon in St. Luna’s Church Cadamstown, and the burial afterwards was in St. Flannan’s Cemetery Kinnitty. Paddy’s family would like to thank everyone for their kindness and support during this difficult time.
A few years ago Midland Tribune journalist Darren Keegan wrote a long and fascinating interview about Paddy. During the interview Paddy said that before the famine Cadamstown's population was over 1,800 people and was halved after the famine; and today it's less than 400 and still falling. "Once there were shops and a thriving cottage industry," he remarked, "a school with two teachers and 60 pupils but today there is no employment opportunities whatsoever outside of farming and very few houses available for anyone who wants to live there." 
Paddy recalled with great fondness the community meitheal of his younger days. "I remember many years ago when a new family needed a home the members of the community built it with them," with stones pulled from the mountain and tools that fell far short of today's teleporters and mixers. A new couple could expect to receive a home soon after marriage and the community toiled and celebrated shoulder to shoulder.
Paddy said he bought his house about seven decades ago with money he earned from selling a few cattle he reared in the mountain fields as a young man, and he had lovingly worked on it ever since – never “borrowing a shilling” or going into debt to do it all. There were nights Paddy was out with a flash-lamp “working away” on the building into the small hours. People lived on the site of his home since 1604. He pointed out that the epicentre of life in the village for the last few decades had been the local pub, Dempsey's, but that was dwindling and the small cosy premises didn't open every night any more and large crowds were rare, apart from some great musical nights which drew life into the village. Sadly, Dempsey's closed its doors in September 2020 and hasn't opened since.
Paddy was born in Cadamstown but lived in Glenleitir in his youth. He came back down from the mountains to Cadamstown in his mid 20s and remained in the village ever since, earning a reputation as being someone to chat to about your heritage and genealogy, where descendants of those who left the mountains and emigrated to all the far-flung corners of the planet regularly arrived unannounced at his door and received a friendly welcome and sometimes revelatory information.
  Born in 1933, son of Brian Heaney and Brigid (née Dillon), Paddy had six sisters – Molly, Helen, Josie, Tess, Madge and Anne.
Paddy's grandfather lived to be 106 and lived through the famine, but like most of his generation, he rarely ever spoke about the harrowing period in his later life and some recollections were handed down through his father.
Paddy remembered growing up in the lively home very fondly. His father was an accomplished uilleann piper and was a kind-hearted man who rarely opened up, but was a very good father. He passed on a love of music and singing, but couldn't understand Paddy's love of Country and Western music!
Paddy and his father worked hard side by side and planted potatoes, reclaimed land and worked in the fields and on the bog together. His father had lived for over 20 years in America and played the pipes at the first ever Sinn Fein meeting in New York City alongside famed piper Jack Toohey. 
“The rare time that he'd talk was when he'd sit in the kitchen and have a smoke – he'd sit down and smoke and I'd sit down and listen. He told me stories he heard from my grandfather about the famine where it was so bad there were bodies in the ditches around the Slieve Blooms,” Paddy recalled. 
Paddy's mother was one of the Dillons of Seskin and was once seriously injured during the War of Independence when a bullet shot from a Black and Tan's rifle struck her head. She was only 18 years of age at the time and never spoke about the incident in her later life and it wasn't until years later that Paddy heard about it. 
“Everything was kept secret at that time. My mother used to do dispatches at that time – she never told me, she'd tell you nothing – but years later another woman told me a dispatch came to Dillons of Seskin above in the mountain and my mother walked across to Langtons of Cumber with the dispatch over the top of the mountain at 12 o'clock at night.
“When she got there Mrs Langton told her the lads were out on an engagement and so she walked across to Kilcormac from there to find them, but was told they were actually in Cloghan and so she set off walking to there with the dispatch hidden in the heel of her shoe. But in the end she had to take a pony and trap from Cloghan to Banagher where she met a man from Galway who was waiting on the bridge for the dispatch,” Paddy recalled.
She was a member of Cumann na mBan with nine other women from the area and she used to visit the prisoners in Hare Park in the Curragh with Mrs Carroll, the local schoolteacher in Cadamstown, making the journey from the Slieve Blooms and back on a pony and trap.
Paddy's recollections of the local community were compiled into two books, 'At the Foot of Slieve Bloom' and 'Coolacrease' and his unrivalled knowledge of the area found him the national headlines when he explored the story of the Pearson brothers, who were both shot by the IRA in 1921 near Cadamstown.
Paddy's first book, 'At the Foot of Slieve Bloom,' examines the story behind all the different areas in the region and now fetches a princely sum when rare copies come up for sale online. Its examination of the pre and post famine period in the region is fascinating and painstakingly researched. 
 It is full of interesting stories and recalls that shortly after the famine one small field played an important role in the area's story in 1847 and became known as 'the oat and meal field' after the two neighbouring families that lived on either side of it found themselves in absolutely dire straits during the famine.
The father from one household, the Conroys who owned the field, pleaded with his neighbour, Luke Daly, to sell him a bag of meal in exchange for the three acre field. The exchange went ahead, but after much deliberation because the bag of oatmeal could barely be spared, and the desperate father received enough food to feed his family.
However, the story did not end there, because 100-years later, in 1947 the descendants of Luke Daly returned to the descendants of the Conroys and offered to give the field back, but although the gesture was warmly acknowledged the Conroys did not take back the field because their neighbours' kindness sustained them in their darkest times. 
Today both families have long left the area and Paddy pointed out the field and recalled the story for visitors to Cadamstown, who were often very interested when he pointed out houses in the area that were now piles of rubble and told them he often used to drink tea in them. 
Other stories in Paddy's collection include one about a man named Tom Scully, who could create cures from plants and herbs growing in the Slieve Blooms; including one which was particularly effective for curing yellow jaundice.
However, Mr Scully was fiercely protective of his secrets and all his cures went to the grave with him – further denoting the secretive nature of the older generations who lived in the Slieve Blooms.
Paddy was a dedicated member of the Ardara Hillwalking Club. He was involved in promoting the Slieve Blooms since Jim Fanning brought the first tourist bus to the area in 1975.
The last time Paddy stood on Ard Eireann, the highest peak of the Slieve Blooms, he was with Jim Fanning and was involved in founding the Slieve Bloom Association in 1975 with him. The group, which is still active today, started with a meeting attended by just four other people
After the meeting in Kinnitty Hall, the four founders later retired to Delahunty's parlour and drew up the Constitution of the Mountain and Paddy recalls Jim Fanning saying there was no point bringing visitors to the mountains unless the villages “were brought up to scratch.”
After receiving some start-up funding, the Association's first job was to create access to the stunning Glenbarrow waterfalls and since then dozens of successful projects have been undertaken by the group.
“They were all laughing at us back then when we were talking about creating walks and people thought nobody would come and use them – but walking is everything here now,” Paddy said. 
Paddy was also a very active member of the Parish Council, who set up a drama group to fund the restoration of four churches in the area and by booking halls all over Laois and Offaly they cleared the debt in less than four years. 
He was also instrumental in establishing the Cadamstown Tidy Towns Association, which remains active today despite dwindling numbers and who once won a Cup in 1976. He remained involved for over 40 years since he established it with Mary Hayden, Mary Donnelly, Tim Downey and Bernie Scully. 
Paddy commented during the interview that he unfortunately saw the future as being “very, very dark” for his beloved Cadamstown and Slieve Blooms: “There are no jobs, there are lots of derelict sites and all the farms are very small and it's hard to make a living with only a small bit of land now. All the young people have to travel for work.
“It's a pity because I can see it deteriorating since my younger days and the community spirit is not as strong as it was. There are very few houses in it and lots of derelict sites and very few who will sell the derelict sites. There should be a compulsory order for people to make them sell the derelict sites so that places like this can come back to life again.“If people want to come and live in the mountains there are no proper roads and bridges for them and it would be very hard. Once the mountain people left, it all finished. I used to go and visit every person up the mountain before they died or left – I'd sit down by the fire and chat with them and that's how I got all the stories, but it's all gone now." He also thought it was a pity that the users of the new mountain bike trails were more interested in zipping by at lightning speeds on their bikes rather than coming to see and learn about the area.
He believed that walking was the best way of connecting with the landscape: “Getting out and walking is the only way to see the mountains and I hope when people come here they get out and walk these hills – they're the best hills for walking in the whole world."