I’m in quiet Grangecon, near Baltinglass in the County Wicklow. Cuan and Niamh have connections there and I stop briefly on my way back home from Dublin for a cup of tea and a chat.

Leaving the hilltop peace of the place I reflect, not for the first time, how close to Dublin one can still find the sheltered rurality of small country villages like Grangecon, places where everybody knows the names of about everybody else, where communities are still closely bonded.

A few weeks later, on the TV, the main story is of a tragedy in Grangecon. Three bodies are found in a home. Two are of octogenarian parents, the third the body of their son.

The police painfully discover that they are not looking for anybody in connection with the crime. It is plain from the bleeding evidence in the home that the 40-year-old son, a very quiet man, had shot his aged parents murdered them and then committed suicide with one of his own sporting rifles.

The TV coverage of the funeral was full of the faces of sorrowing villagers, shocked, some of them weeping. The family had been highly respected, the mother the village teacher for many years, the father a member of the golf club and the chapel choir, the son notably quiet but courteous and inoffensive.

In the papers there was more flesh put on the bare bones of the reportage. One well-informed report suggested that the tragedy may well have been caused by a combination of factors which included the fact that a dominant mother had ruled her son’s life completely since he was a delicate boy.

Another element could have been caused by the fact that the family farm of 125 acres, worth almost €4 million, was not going to be bequeathed to the son alone (because he had chosen to be a sculptor rather than farmer) but divided between himself and his two sisters.

And a third element, according to locals who knew the family well, could have been created by the mother’s several objections to her son’s choice of girlfriends, including a girlfriend deemed “unsuitable” merely because she was a Protestant.

This is all speculation rather than fact but, having covered too many such incidents down the years, it has been my experience that what locals tell visiting reporters is most usually close to the truth of such tragedies.

There was an interesting and illuminating quote from a Sunday Independent report by Larissa Nolan, where she wrote that a local said to her, when describing the son’s involvement, “I wasn’t too surprised. That’s not to say I ever thought he was capable of it but in hindsight it wasn’t too much of a shock.

“I think there was a grievance growing and growing … I believe he was a deeply lonely man … as he got older he would make you feel as though he thought he was below you while at the same time he would be quietly sizing you up.”

And what shocks me about that (and what I’ve written here before) is that anyone who has ever lived in rural Ireland knows that there are young men like this in every district in the country. I’ve lived in areas of all four provinces and they have been within a mile of any house I ever dwelt in.

They are as standard an element in their communities as the gas character, the ne’er do well, the workaholic, the drunk, the pioneer, the musician. They are so common that they are called are called Dark Lads in most regions, and they have always been there.

More worryingly, though, is the fact that in the past people would invariably say, “Ah, sure he is totally harmless, wouldn’t hurt a fly, just a bit strange of himself.” And it seems to me there is now very strong evidence that is no longer the case.

The Dark Lads have become dangerous.

The classic example was Brendan O’Donnell who, a decade and more ago now, went wild in the forests of East Galway with a rifle and eventually ended up murdering a mother and her son and a priest who earlier befriended him. Edna O’Brien factioned that tragedy in a controversial book later.

O’Donnell was the most prominent of the Dark Lads of recent decades, but he was by no means the only one. Hardly a month is now passing without incidents, frequently fatal, involving them. And many of the incidents involve aging parents such as in the Grangecon incident.

What has happened to create the new rural problem?

I’m not certain, but I think the increasing isolation of many rural families and a changed lifestyle throughout the countryside may well be relevant. In the past random callers to homes were a daily and easy presence.

There was an easy acceptance of the Dark Lads by the callers, who built up casual friendships with them. They knew neighbors in a way they do not know them now.

A recent agricultural report, for example, suggested that because there are now mostly part-time farmers in Ireland, spending less time in their fields, cattle herds are becoming more feral, more prone to attack strangers.

I don’t know if there is any kind of valid link there to the Dark Lads, but certainly it’s a fact that many country homes in remote areas nowadays would not see a visitor from one end of the week to the other. Even the postman leaves the mail in boxes at the ends of lanes.

Country folk, because of increased robberies and burglaries, have become more suspicious of callers now. A changed lifestyle all round, with more socialization and clubbing in nearby towns, can easily leave the Dark Ones in total isolation, especially when they get older. They tend to disappear from the public view behind the secret closed doors of home.

Social services in the countryside are often criticized still. They have improved markedly from the past, but it is still possible for families in need to not receive a professional visit in time to solve problems.

Neighbors may well suspect something is wrong, but are still most reluctant to report this to the authorities, often until it is too late.

The discovery in their homes of the bodies of those who died days or even weeks earlier is not creating headlines any more. Neither are charges against Dark Ones for offenses, often criminal, against their parents or neighbors. It is a modern reality.

Sorry to be mentioning the subject again. Back to the Bright Side next week.