Graveyards are full of stories. Thomas Grey’s Elegy in a Country Churchyard captured this decisively in poetic form – so much so that any subsequent poem seems a pale shadow.
In Drangan, Co Tipperary, in the Slieveardagh area -a village which like Cloneen has no Wikipedia presence – I came across this:
It is irresistably poignant to read of this man whose parents died within days of each other in 1919 (?of the Influenza Pandemic) when he was one or less. And he himself died on the 71st anniversary of his mother.
There are other stones with stories there. I am wary of intruding on grief … but here is one with a rather jollier story to tell:
Séamus Sweeney 