Slain couple buried to music of Pink Floyd

We're just two lost soulsSwimming in a fish bowl,Year after year,Running over the same old ground.What have we found?The same old fears.

Carl and Catherine Doyle, the young couple who left the violence of the city only to meet a premature death in their new home in the country, were buried yesterday to the strains of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. The song, played on tape during Mass for the couple, seemed to sum up the life, and the fate, of the couple who had moved from Dublin under the rural resettlement scheme to start a new life in Ballintubber, Co Roscommon.

So, so you think you can tellHeaven from Hell,Blue skies from pain.Can you tell a green fieldFrom a cold steel rail?

The couple were found dead in their house at Carane, near Ballintubber, on Saturday. A man appeared in court on Sunday charged with their murder.

Father Liam Hickey, the celebrant at the Mass in St Ciaran's Church in Hartstown, Clonsilla, Dublin, told the congregation he found it "unbelievable" that he was conducting another funeral Mass in the church, only three weeks after Catherine's brother had died.

Father Hickey said he could understand the anger of Catherine's parents at what had happened. But they also understood that although "horrible things might happen, good must prevail".

"As I see it, there is only one certainty in life. This is that God is compassionate and He welcomes us, warts and all."

Father Hickey dedicated special prayers to the couple's four young children, Jessie, Frank, Heather and Hollie. He also asked the congregation to pray for Catherine's sister, Sarah Jane, who sustained head injuries on Saturday and is in Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, and her two children.

The mourners were led by Carl Doyle's parents, Lily and Joe, and Catherine Doyle's parents, Catherine and Pat. Several hundred neighbours and friends also attended.

At the graveside in Mulhuddart cemetery, the parish priest of Ballintubber, Father Seamus Cox, recited the rosary as the two rose-bedecked coffins were lowered into the ground.

Ms Sarah Jane Doyle was said to be stable at Beaumont Hospital yesterday. The dead couple's four children were being cared for by their grandparents, gardai in Castlerea, Co Roscommon, said.