The following excerpt from chapter one of "The Kindly Spot" lays the foundation for what follows:

There was, in those days, another figure whose appearance on the street caused commotion and conflicting feelings among young and old. This was Bob Devitt, an itinerant, a tramp, not one of the tinker class but cut from a different cloth. Bob was a big hulk of a man, bearded, clear eyed, keenly observant, hobnail booted, fearsome in appearance to youngsters, but a gentle giant to their parents. In all weathers he wore a variety of shabby overcoats, and carried an enormous sack slung over his shoulders.

Bob was treated cruelly by the young boys of the town. For whatever reason, myth, rumour, gossip, it was widely believed that Bob never spent a shilling, a sixpence, or even a penny of the charity extended to him by the good people whose houses he entered on his twice a year pilgrimage through all the towns, villages, and farmlands scattered throughout Donegal and a couple of neighbouring counties. They believed he carried his booty in the great sack on his back, or cached it from time to time in tin cans hidden in hedges or stone fences by the roadside. And whenever Bob appeared, as if by magic there appeared too a crowd of boys, running in front of him and teasing, "Bob, spare a fiver? Bob, change a fiver?"

A "fiver" was a £5 note, a huge sum of money when the average weekly country wage was less than half of that.

It was enough to drive any sane man crazy and it always infuriated poor Bob, who would shout and roar back, and flail at the dancing circle of young devils who always slipped safely out of the reach of the ashplant that he carried as a walking stick and used for his own protection from man and animal.

Eventually parents would appear, themselves as angry as Bob with their children, and haul them back indoors, leaving Bob to proceed in peace on his travels.

Bob was welcome in many houses, and seemingly more so in the homes of those who were not particularly affluent themselves. Many people thought it was lucky to have Bob visit their homes and cross their threshholds. Sitting at the kitchen fire or kitchen table, the gentle giant could talk at any level on many subjects. If he spotted a guitar or violin in the house, his talk would be on music. If there were many books to be seen, then he would talk of reading and literature. If there was a new baby in the house, Bob, an ogre to the older brothers and sisters, could somehow coax a smile and a gurgle of joy from the infant.

Bob's was a hard life. His roof was the sky, summer or winter, his bed under a hawthorne tree in wet weather, or in an open roadside ditch when it was dry. At night his many coats kept him warm in spring, summer and autumn, and in winter he padded his chest, legs and arms with package after package of crumpled newspaper that he carried in his great big sack. There are many still alive who can tell of seeing Bob fast asleep on a winter's morning in a roadside ditch, swathed in newspapers, the unmelted snow lying on his beard, while he snored away blissfully, wrapped in the arms of Morpheus.

What his origins were, nobody could swear. He took his secret with him. Some thought he had been a candidate for the priesthood whose mind had snapped during the course of his studies. After his death a distant relative was discovered, as I remember somewhere in the Midlands, but even that was obscure. The tins of money were never found, and Bob had a pauper's burial. Only those who really cared were present.

That photograph of Bob Devitt may be the only one in existence, and I am impelled to reproduce it, both to preserve his memory and to demonstrate once again the efficacy of the Internet as an instrument in preserving the social history of our times.

It shows Bob standing outside the railings of the Market Yard in Ballyshannon. It could serve as a prototype of "The Tramp with a whiskery face" in Quentin Blake's children's book "Patrick".

And I wish to make one correction in the original story. As related to me by my late friend and colleague, reporter Hugh Daly, only one person attended Bob’s burial.

May Bob and my friend Hugh both rest in peace.

Bob Devitt
"The sky was his roof"