I scratched around some more, found doc/pgpool-en.html and my ignorance
has been somewhat lessened.
My previous config was almost right except for:
pgpool2_hostname = ''
#backend_data_directory0
#backend_data_directory1
and my Linux distro had assigned hostname 'slave1' to localhost, on which
Pg wasn't LISTENing at time... a deal-killer :P
Regards
Henry