” The second record was at the time of the death of the 14th Viscount. In his 70th year he had been taken to a nursing home in Dublin for observation and died there, rather suddenly, in October 1907. The coffin containing his body was taken by road to Gormanston and placed in the family’s private chapel, a separate building standing a few yards from the Castle. The burial was to take place in the family vault the following day, and the second son, Colonel the Hon Richard Preston, DSO, undertook to keep watch in the chapel, which was lighted by a number of candles in tall candlesticks placed around the bier. The following account in my brother-in-law’s own words of his experience would seem to show that the foxes not content with issuing their premonitions, continue their interest so long as the ‘mortal coil’ remains above ground.
”Sometime around midnight, or in the very early hours of the morning, I became aware of a sound of snuffling and whining at the door of the chapel at the west end, that is, opposite the altar. My elder brother at that time was breeding Irish wolf hounds, and I knew he had a litter of puppies. Thinking the yard gate had been left open by mistake and the puppies had got out, I went and opened the chapel door. A beam of light from the candles poured through the doorway, and in it I saw four or five foxes. One was sitting within two feet of the door, a couple of others were sitting a little further away to the left, and one or two more walked leisurely across the beam of light. All their eyes were turned towards me, and I was very conscious of the golden-yellow stare.
”I confess I got a fright, and hastily shut the door. There was a second door on the south side of the chapel, and on opening this I found several more foxes there. I instinctively aimed a kick at the nearest one, but he merely avoided my foot and sat down again a yard or two further away. I remained in the chapel until shortly before daylight, when the noise of whining and snuffling ceased, and on going out I found that the foxes had made off,”
What will the foxes do now that Gormanston Castle has become Gormanston College – a school for boys – owned by the Order of Franciscans? Possibly out of deference to St Francis of Assisi, that lover of animals, the local foxes may decide to continue their interest in the family that had lived there in straight succession for 600 years?”
So Eileen, wife of the 15th Lord Gormanston concludes her account of the legend. The 16th Lord Gormanston was killed in the retreat to Dunkirk in 1940. Did the foxes pay their respects? There are two accounts, the first taken from Tribute to an Armorist, Essays for John Brooke-Little.
“A distinguished Irish lady, who was living near Gormanston at the time, told me that one of the villagers came into her parent’s house one morning in June 1940 and said “something has happened to Lord Gormanston, the foxes were barking all night long”. The news that the 16th Viscount had been killed in action in France came through shortly after.”
My grandfather believed the foxes remembered the Gormanston connection with the Bellews. On a June day in 1940 my brother, now Lord Bellew, was reposing in his pram on the lozenge* at Barmeath. It was, unusually, a warm day and a fox sauntered past the sculpted bay trees and curled up in the shade under the pram to mark the 16th Viscount’s premature death. As a child I found this a most convincing continuation of the legend. Older and wiser, I now know that my brother was born in 1943 but my admiration for my grandfather’s ability to tell a good story is undiminished.
Has the legend been broken, perhaps. The 17th Viscount Gormanston has married a Fox: Lucy Fox, daughter of the actor Edward Fox.
(* a lozenge is an expanse of lawn but I’m sure you knew that already.)