There was intense Garda security yesterday when they buried Patrick Ward in a family plot under a sullen Galway sky.
The surly weather matched the mood of the burial of Mr Ward, who was shot dead earlier this week at a family funeral in Co Sligo.
An hour before the funeral Mass in St Michael's Church, Ballinasloe, gardai set up roadblocks and armed detectives searched Traveller families as they made their way into the town.
A number of what the gardai described as "potential weapons" were seized as the town centre filled up with families from the clans who make up the Traveller community. They found a town that was shuttered and the pubs closed by order of the State. Applications had been made to the District Court under Section 19 of the Intoxicating Liquor Act, 1927, to do this.
According to Supt Frank Gunter, who had charge of the operation, the decision to close all pubs within a 30-mile radius of Ballinasloe had not been taken lightly.
"Experience has shown that drink can be associated with disorder on some occasions and that is why the decision was taken. No one objected to the application," he said.
There was some friction between the gardai and the families before the Requiem Mass began. Members of the Travelling community asked uniformed gardai to leave the area near the church. They withdrew.
The Mass was celebrated by the local curate, Father Seamus Bohan, and the church was filled with women and children and the older men.
The younger men remained outside, watchful as hawks, as if they feared another attack on them. They were there, too, to note what other families were coming to join them.
"The church is for women. The graveyard is for the men," one of the family told me as he sheltered from driving rain in the porch.
In his simple homily Father Bohan told the congregation that violence must never be used because it is wrong and never succeeds. It only brings pain and suffering, he said.
He spoke of how, as a society, we put little store in the gift of life. We appear to abuse it and not treat it as sacred.
At the little churchyard near Mount Bellew there had been a stand-off situation, too. When the cortege arrived, shadowed by the Garda helicopter, the gardai had agreed to move back from the grave.
Two detectives, armed with Uzi sub-machineguns, stood at the gate of the church as the burial took place. At the graveside were Patrick Ward's grieving mother, Margaret, his father, Michael, his young widow and their six children.
When most of the women had left the cemetery, a member of the family told reporters that the men who had murdered Mr Ward had escaped back to Britain. He said they had had five handguns ready to carry out the killing.
The man accused the Garda of arresting innocent men, Mr Ward's relatives, at the scene while the guilty ones had escaped.
He said the killing was part of an ongoing feud between the Wards and another Traveller family based in the west of Ireland.
A truce had been negotiated between the two families by a senior garda in Tuam, Co Galway, last year. That truce looked very fragile last night as the families dispersed.