Paddy Ward and Mayne inscription

I WONDER is it still there? A story from many years ago centred on a debate over an epitaph on a tombstone in Mayne Cemetery.

It read: ‘Beneath this stone, there lieth one That still his friends díd please; To Heaven, I hope, he’s surely gone, To enjoy eternal ease. He drank, he sang, while here on earth. Lived happy as a lord. And now he hath resigned his breath. , God rest him, Paddy Ward.’

Paddy departed this life on September 12, 1793, Aged 65 years. On June 3, 1875 at a meeting of the Drogheda Board of Guardians, Mr Owen Markey moved the dismlssal of the caretaker at Mayne because he allowed portion of this inscription to be erased.

He stated that a long time ago Father Joseph Markey, then the respected parish priest of Clogher, asked the caretaker to get the inscription renewed.

He did so, and finding that the date of death and age of the deceased had been left blank, he filled it in from information received.

It was little wonder that he felt extremely mortified when he visited the cemetery later to find the greater part of the inscription obliterated and that the caretaker had made no report on the mattcr.

Rev. James Powderley. P.P.. Clogher, asked the Board not to blame the poor caretaker because he would accept responsibility for the replacement of certain words. Aocording to tradition in the parish, the history of the tombstone was as follows: Paddy Ward had cause to get it erected during his lifetime over the grave he intended to be buried in. When the stone was cut he invited all his friends to the grave for a drinking part and they got ‘seriously’ drunk.