I first met Pearse McLoughlin about 20 years ago, shortly after I came to live in Howth and I got hold of a little map marking all the local rights of way. Across the top, Pearse had written: "To the people of Howth. Our rights of way are ours by law. They cannot be blocked or possessed. Take this map with you when you walk the hills. Arise and claim your rights."
That summed up Pearse. He was fiercely independent, no respecter of privilege or rank, not one for doffing his cap to authority. And he loved his native place of Howth in all its wild beauty.
Pearse was a fisherman. He was born 79 years ago in Mudoak Cottage, a little two roomed dwelling in the shadow of Shielmartin hill, where Howth golf club now is. There were 14 children in the family.
He had a simple education and left school at 15. But he was not a simple man. He had a gift for poetry. He wrote little books of verse that went far and wide throughout the world because Pearse was able to capture the spirit of his native place in simple rhyme.
"The Cross Tree links the Boreen, the Brook and Toddy's Hill, With Balglass and the Puzzle, Grace O'Malley and Balkilf.
Green Hollows calls through Paddy Priest's Wood, the Summit and Mudoak, And Mushrock covers Aideen's Grave with a fragrant leafy cloak."
"Pearse was not a vain man. He had no great opinion of his verse, and didn't consider there was any literary merit in it. He said he wrote "to put a memory on places and people."
He was something of an amateur lawyer and many people came to him for guidance. Local youngsters in trouble found in Pearse an unpaid legal adviser. Quietly, without fuss, he helped countless people who had fallen on hard times.
Pearse was a Wolfe Tone republican. He believed in breaking the connection with England, and served 10 years in prisons in Britain during the 1940s.
He was a familiar figure around Howth with his fisherman's cap and his bag of shopping and a cigarette never far from his mouth. You would come across him, often with a little dog, walking the hills and fields of the peninsula in all kinds of weather, at all times of day. He was a kind man, generous and loyal. To make friends with Pearse was to make a friend for life.
He was a deeply religious man, a daily Mass goer. He loved the sea, and many of his poems relate to the sea and to fishing. It was fitting that he should die on board a boat - the Lough Beltra, moored in Howth harbour.
To his sons, Peadar, Thomas, Snowy and Paul, and his extended family, sincere condolences on their sad loss.