Brother Paschal Williamson:BROTHER PASCHAL Williamson, a monk who has died aged 87 and who loved all things Irish, was equally at home on a céilí dance floor or in a bullring as he was in a house of God.
He was already an accomplished professional Irish dance teacher and adjudicator when, recovering from pleurisy and considering a change of direction in his life, fate intervened.
Franciscan friars who had recently moved into the area, returning to Donegal after 300 years, befriended him at his tiny cottage home overlooking Donegal Bay at Rossnowlagh. They noted an organ in his living room and asked Seán Williamson, as he was then known, if they could borrow it and if he would play it at a special service in their church, which was then no more than two welded wartime Nissan huts.
The organ was carried by donkey and cart to the makeshift church a mile away. It remained there as Mr Williamson returned week after week to play it at Mass. It wasn’t long before he agreed to be received into the Third Order of St Francis, a lay movement dedicated to voluntary work for the Franciscans.
It was the start of more than half a century in the service of the order, all of it in Rossnowlagh.
His great talents were music and organisation. He set about raising funds for a planned new church. That involved organising dramas, céilí dances and concerts as well as, in later years, an annual week-long bazaar. He was reckoned to have raised millions of euro over the years.
In 1958, six years after the opening of the modern friary, Seán Williamson became Brother Paschal.
He said many years later that he felt he could make a greater contribution as a brother than as a priest. He was the order’s Mr Fixit in the northwest, constantly developing ideas to raise funds for the Rossnowlagh friary.
As the numbers of visitors to Rossnowlagh increased, especially from the North, where every year the 12th of July heralded an exodus of nationalists to the Republic for summer holidays, he opened a religious goods shop, which is now sited close to the church entrance. Most goods that he sold fetched well above their marked price as, with a disarming smile, he would inquire of the customer if they really wanted their change.
He also pursued a hobby breeding pedigree cattle, purchasing an Aberdeen Angus heifer for £68 from a Protestant friend. He often said she was the luckiest animal he ever owned. He had her for 19 years and bred 12 champion bulls from her.
They included one, Roose Paschal, named after him and the townland in which he was born near Frosses, Co Donegal, and which was acclaimed supreme champion at a show in Perth, Scotland. By then Roose Paschal was owned by a Scottish farmer who invited Brother Paschal to the show as his guest.
Runners-up to the bull were a number of the queen mother’s animals. Brother Paschal was later to recall how gracious she was in defeat when she presented him with his breeder’s prize.
It was a prize he would lay alongside the many he won for Irish dancing in his youth. He frequently cycled up to 50 miles to compete in feiseanna and, later, to share the secret of his skill at dance classes throughout the northwest and north midlands.
Even as a monk, Irish dancing occupied much of his time. He was a founder-organiser of Feis na gCeithre Maistri held annually between 1959 and the early 1990s at the friary in Rossnowlagh.
Brother Paschal Williamson: born June 24th, 1921; died February 19th, 2009