MOURNERS WERE waiting two hours before the removal service was to begin, two hours before the final journey of Diarmuid and Lorraine Flood and their children, Julie and Mark, to the beautiful, 150-year-old parish church of St Clement's at Cloughbawn, half a mile from their home village of Clonroche.
They parked up in a field on the brow of a hill, guided in by community volunteers, and walked in silence a few hundred yards to the country churchyard, its doors closed to all but the vast extended families of the Floods and Kehoes.
Diarmuid Flood (41), his wife Lorraine (38) and their children Mark (6) and Julie (5) were found dead inside their burning home in the early hours of Saturday. Mr Flood had been shot in the head and his wife had been shot in the chest. Gardaí said her injury was not self-inflicted, while Mr Flood's may or may not have been. The exact causes of their children's deaths have not been established.
Inside the church, with a capacity of about 400, "reserved" signs had been placed on each of the benches by volunteers earlier in the day.
"We have to stay busy somehow; it keeps your mind off things," said one of the woman, busily Sellotaping the notices that were superfluous anyway since other volunteers were on hand later on to ensure that only family were allowed through the church doors.
Everyone understood why; Lorraine Flood had 16 aunts and uncles and 76 first cousins on her father's side alone, they said.
Among the graceful cream arrangements of lilies and roses around the altar, a basket of yellow roses from the children of Clonroche national school provided a splash of colour.
There were also two enormous cards signed by the children - "for Julie and Mark" - Julie's, a riot of brightly-painted butterflies and flowers ("because that's all she ever drew", said a woman wistfully) and Mark's, a boyish array of trains, cars, lorries, planes and robots, graced with a selection of beagle dogs to represent the much-loved beagles recently acquired by the family.
By 7.10pm up to 1,000 people were waiting outside behind the cordons amid the daffodils, primroses, bluebells and ancient beech trees when a bell began to toll.
And on a far hill on the little rural road, in a scene that could have come from another Ireland, a great throng of 500 family mourners came into view, walking slowly, heads bent, holding hands and linking arms, following two hearses, each bearing a large oak coffin and a small, white coffin.
They had walked over half a mile from Clonroche, past the old house in the village where Diarmuid, Lorraine, Mark and Julie had lived up to a week ago; where Diarmuid's grandfather had raised his own family, now a sad, burnt-out, boarded up reminder of a horror without reason.
And from there out the winding road, past sheep, cattle and singing birds to a churchyard where Diarmuid's sister clutched a picture of Lorraine in her red Strawberry Queen sash.
The funeral directors removed first the adult coffins from the hearses, then the white coffins, and relatives stepped forward to carry them together into the church to the accompaniment of an old Irish air played on a tin whistle.
"God remembers the good things we have done," said the reading chosen for the service.
"What else is there to say?" said a local man trudging back up the road.
"Sure, what do we know about anything?"