An educator turned bookseller, who also contributed various articles and reviews as a writer, he eventually became best known as a collector and publisher of Irish folktales and folklore, particularly from his native County Wexford.

Kennedy was born in the early part of 1801[2] in Kilmyshal beyond the outskirts of Bunclody,[2] County Wexford, Ireland, in a financially well-off family of peasant stock.

[8] The lived in the village of Kilmyshal until reached age six, and Mount Leinster, which loomed tall over his boyhood hometown served as a backdrop of his first book.

The school was run by the famous "Mr. O'Neill", and at first Patrick's classes were held at the Cloughbawn Parish Church, until a schoolhouse was erected by the landlord, Robert Carew.

[17] The Commission of Education which replaced the Society emphasized agricultural learning, and when the Glasnevin facility with a farm for practical training and a residence for the trainee teachers were completed in 1838, Kennedy was appointed Superintendent.

[29] The Banks of the Boro: a Chronicle of the County of Wexford (1867) and Evenings in the Duffrey (1869) are described as the most ambitious of his works, insofar as they each is designed with (an albeit nominal) plot, and the two most important of Kennedy's contribution in the estimation of IFC collector James G.

[31] But Robert Whitney of Moneytucker testified to suffering a harrowing experience at the hands of the rebels, for his house was plundered and burned, himself taken captive, lashed, and threatened to be killed a number of times.

[33] The 1798 rebellion was before Patrick Kennedy's birth, but there were three or four elder siblings who experienced it, and three yeomen came riding in search of rebels at their home, with one searcher about to torch the place down before a comrade intervened.

Delaney confirms that even in later times in the region, such pastimes at wakes were often engaged in, in unrestrained and prolonged fashion, particularly if the deceased was a transient, with no close acquaintances to mourn him.

[29] Patrick Kennedy was one of the pioneers in uncovering Irish folkloric material, with a lasting impact on William Butler Yeats and the Celtic Revival movement.

[39] Kennedy's tales from County Wexford, mostly recalled from memory as told in English during his youth, are valuable since they preserve the folklore of a region that became somewhat neglected from folklore-collection subsequently in the 19th century.