CHAPTER III.. Ireland Re-Visited.

IRELAND RE-VISITED.

I was a boy of about 12 when I first re-visited Ireland; and, as the steamer entered Carlingford Lough, which to my mind almost equals Killarney's beauty--but that, perhaps, is a Northman's prejudice--with the noble range of the Mourne mountains on the one side and the Carlingford Hills on the other, it seemed to my young imagination like a glimpse of fairy land.

Carlingford reminded me of what my old masters, the Christian Brothers, used to teach us, that those places ending in "ford" had at one time been Norse settlements. There is not the slightest trace, I should say, of people of Norse descent along this coast now, unless we accept the theory that would regard as such the descendants of the Norman De Courcy's followers, who can be recognised by their names, and are still to be found, side by side, and intermingling with those of the original Celtic children of the soil in the barony of Lecale. It is astonishing, by the way, how you still find in Ireland, after centuries of successive confiscations, the old names in their old tribal lands, mingled in places, as in Lecale, with the Norman names; the two races being now thoroughly amalgamated--as distinguished from the case of King James's Planters in Ulster, who, to this day are, as a rule, as distinct from the population amongst whom they live--whether of pure Celtic strain or with a Norman admixture--as when first they came.

There was an idea in our family that I had a vocation for the priesthood, and I was being sent to my uncle, Father Michael O'Loughlin, parish priest of Dromgoolan, County Down, who placed me in charge of Mr. Johnson, a somewhat noted classical teacher in the neighbouring little town of Castlewellan.

I have seen but little of Ireland, but during the few months I was here on this occasion I made the best use of my time. I could have had no better guide and preceptor than "Priest Mick," as my mother used to call my uncle. I imagine that the term "Priest," which, in the North of Ireland, was formerly so much used as a prefix to the name of the Catholic clergyman, must have arisen amongst those not of his own flock, and was probably not intended to have exactly a respectful meaning.

Father Michael sometimes came to see his relatives in Liverpool, who were very numerous. He called them the "Tribe of Brian" (his father's name) and he made a point of visiting them all, down to the very latest arrival--indeed, I think he was the only one who knew the whole of the ramifications of "the Tribe."

He used to say that his father--the aforesaid Brian--had one of the largest noses in the country. There was only another man, he said, who could approach him in that respect. If the two men met in a very narrow "loanan "--what they call a "boreen" in other parts of Ireland--the other man, who was a bit of a wag, would put his hand to his nose, and make a motion of putting it aside, as if there was not sufficient room for two such organs, and call out with a kind of snuffle: "Pass, Brian!"

The late Mgr. O'Laverty, in his "History of the Dioceses of Down and Connor," says: "From a government official survey in 1766 there were fifteen families in Castlewellan, of whom two only (Hagans and O'Donnells) were Catholics." Up to that date there must have been, during this century, a considerable clearance of the Catholic population from the best land of this district, for I should say--judging from King James's Army List and other authorities--that the Magennises (who, with the MacCartans, were the chief territorial families of the old race in Down) still held land in the neighbourhood up to the end of the seventeenth century. As still further showing this, it will be found that "Eiver Magennis of Castlewellan" was one of the members for the County Down in what Thomas Davis truly describes as "The Patriot Parliament" of 1689.

The learned historian of Down and Connor gives an interesting account of the only Norman colony of any extent in the province of Ulster. I have already spoken of this. Notwithstanding the very small Norman admixture, in the main the Catholics of the North are the most pure-blooded Celts in Ireland. And even in the case of Lecale, the original Celtic population intermingled with the descendants of the Norman settlers, who, like the older native population have ever remained true to the old faith. The preponderance of the Celtic element in the Catholics of Ulster must be overwhelming. What is called "Protestant Ulster" is practically a foreign importation, which the native population never absorbed, as they did the earlier invaders.

Speaking of the Rev. Cornelius (or, as he was oftener called, Corney) Denvir, a relative of ours, who afterwards became Bishop of Down and Connor, Father O'Laverty says: "The Denvirs are a Norman race, brought to Lecale by De Courcy. The late bishop observed the name in several of the towns in Normandy."

I only met Bishop Denvir once, when my father--who was his second cousin--took me to see him at the Grecian Hotel, Liverpool, when he was on his way either to or from Rome. I once, when a small boy, incurred my father's displeasure by criticising adversely (from what I had read in the "Nation") Dr. Denvir's support of what was called the "Bequest Bill." There were some strictures in the "Nation" on the favour shown to this Bill by three of the Irish Hierarchy, Archbishops Crolly and Murray, and Bishop Denvir. The last was a man of great learning. An edition of the Bible was published under his auspices by Sims and McIntyre, of Belfast.

During my stay in Ireland, I lived in the house of my uncle, Owen (or Oiney, as he was commonly called) Bannon, in the townland of Ballymagenaghy, where my mother was born.

No boy could have had a better object lesson in the part of Irish history embracing the Plantation of Ulster than Ballymagenaghy. It is eminently typical of the kind of rocky and barren land to which the children of the soil were driven--land which would hardly bear cultivation. I need scarcely say that the people were "Papishes" to a man.

There was a hill behind my Uncle Oiney's house called Carraig (pronounced "Corrig"), in English "rock," and the name might well apply to most of the townland, in which the chief productions seemed to be stones and rocks. Carraig was a kind of shoulder of what I heard the people calling "My lord's mountain." This was part of Lord Annesley's domain, and separated from Carraig and several small farms by a wall, which ran down to a sheet of water at the foot--Castlewellan Lough. I, as a student of the "Nation," was not at all satisfied that an Irish mountain should be called by such a name, which spoke volumes for the state of serfdom into which the people had fallen. I was not long in finding the real name--Sliab na Slat (mountain of Rods).

I often looked with admiration at the view from its highest point. Underneath, the side of the mountain was clothed with trees down to the edge of the lough, which mirrored the wooded eminences of exquisite beauty surrounding it. Looking eastward you could see Dundrum Bay and the white sails of the fishing boats.(They used to sing a mournful lament around the turf fires of Ballymagenaghy of "The loss of the Mourne Fishermen" in a great storm off this coast). Further off you might see an occasional large sailing vessel or steamer, and, further still, in the dim distance, you could just discern the Isle of Man. Southward the eye took in the noble range of the Mourne mountains, running from east to west, from where, at Newcastle, the Irish sea comes to kiss the foot of the lofty Slieve Donard, towering in majesty over all his fellows--rugged sentinels of the hills and vales of Down.

Lying, as if nestling under the Mourne range, was a small, well-wooded hill, part of the domain of Lord Roden, who held high rank among the Orange ascendancy faction, and, as will be seen later, may be said to have held the lives and liberties of his Catholic fellow-countrymen in this district in his hands.

In Ballymagenaghy I was oftener called by my mother's name than my father's. In those days, as often as not, when a girl got married she was still called by her friends by her maiden name. So, on the first Sunday after my arrival, when I was taken over to Leitrim chapel, where I served my uncle's Mass, I found myself referred to as "Peggy Loughlin's wee boy." It did not seem at all strange to me, for I scarcely ever heard her called by any other name. Indeed, some forty years afterwards--when I was organising for the Irish National League--I met a County Down man in Cumberland. He was, as I soon found, from "our own place," as they affectionately call it. He was trying to trace out what family I belonged to. At last he had it--"Oh" he said, "You would be a son of Margaret O'Loughlin?" I hesitated for moment, when Edward McConvey, the local organiser--a County Down man, too--who had introduced us, laughed heartily as he said: "Here's a quare man; doesn't know his own mother's name!" In fact, I had so seldom heard my mother called anything else but "Peggy" that the proper name sounded strange for the moment. Indeed, it had evidently taken our friend some time to remember the name of "Margaret," which he, no doubt, thought the more polite one to use in speaking of my mother.

Her family did not generally use the prefix "O" in her younger days. It was only after her two brothers, Bernard and Michael, became priests, and always called and signed themselves "O'Loughlin," that the prefix was resumed. This is a common experience in other Irish families.

Many of the small holdings in Ballymagenaghy would not support in anything approaching to comfort the large families with which the sturdy and industrious people were blessed. This was certainly the case with the Bannons, but they were not entirely dependent on the land they tilled, as several of the family were employed in weaving in a portion of the house, the looms being their own. I have often admired the beautiful damask table-cloths produced in the homes of these "mountainy" people, the webs, when finished, being taken to Banbridge, to the warehouses of the manufacturers, and the yarn and the patterns for the next lot being brought back on the return journey.

I believe that these cottage industries no longer exist, and that the beautiful fabrics, for which our northern province is famous, are now produced by steam power in Banbridge and other Ulster towns.

As the young men and boys of the Bannons worked at their looms, and the women and girls at their spinning and "flowering," when not wanted to help on the land, the father, Oiney, would occasionally go over to England as a travelling packman, and so increase the family store. I have known in late years other Ulstermen doing this--amongst others my old friend Bernard MacAnulty, of whom I shall have more to say later.

I had often, at my home in Liverpool, heard of Irish hospitality. Here in Ballymagenaghy I had many practical illustrations of this in the way they treated the "poor man" or "poor woman" as they called them--they never called them beggars--who came to their doors. Indeed, it seemed to me that these had no occasion to ask for help, for more than once I have seen a "poor woman" coming in with her bed upon her back, putting it down in the warmest corner behind the chimney breast, and making herself at home as a matter of course, without going through the formality of asking for a night's lodging.

Of the enormous number of harvestmen who passed every year through Liverpool, except from the County Donegal, there were not so many from the northern province. The majority were from Connaught. They generally landed at the Clarence Dock, Liverpool, a wiry, hardy-looking lot, with frieze coats, corduroy breeches, clean white shirts with high collars, and blackthorn sticks. I have seen them filling the breadth of Prescot Street, as they left the town, marching up like an army on foot to the various parts of England they were bound for. This was before special cheap trains were run for harvestmen.

At night, in my Irish mountain home, after I had prepared my Latin lessons for the following day, and my uncle, aunt, and cousins had left off work, I joined with great enjoyment in the family group around the turf fire, and listened with rapt attention to songs and stories; my favourite among the latter being the adventures of Barney Henvey among the fairies in the old rath, or "forth," as they called it, of Ballymagenaghy.

I may say that, up to this moment, I have a certain liking for such stories--of course as fairy stories. But, being a boy of enquiring mind, I wanted to get at the whole theory of the existence of these beings, and, accordingly, this is what I gathered as to the origin, present existence, and future state of the "good people," as they called them. In "The Irish Fairy Legends," a number of my "Penny Irish Library," I find I have dealt with the subject. As the passage gives the explanation I got at my uncle Oiney's more correctly than I can trust to my memory to give it now, after a lapse of some sixty years, I may be excused for giving the following extract:--

The belief is that, in the great rebellion of Lucifer, of the spirits who fell from heaven, some, not so guilty as those who "went further and fared worse," fell upon our earth, and into the air and water that surround it. These are the Fairies, who have their various dispositions, like mortals, and like them, at the day of judgment, will be rewarded or punished according to their deserts.

In the "Fairy Legends" I have also given the story of "Barney Henvey" mentioned above. There is something like it in the "Ingoldsby Legends," and, no doubt, in the fairy mythologies of other nations, but my story is of Irish origin. Heaven only knows through how many ages it has been handed down to us. It is one of the fairy stories my mother and grandmother used to tell us as long ago as I can remember. I have a little grandson who, when smaller, used sometimes to insist when put to bed after he had said his "lying-down prayers," upon hearing "Barney Henvey" before he went to sleep; and so it will, no doubt, go on, and such stories may be told in ages to come, not only in Ireland--"A Nation once again"--but in every settlement of the Clan-na-Gael throughout the world.

Friends and neighbours would come to my uncle Oiney's from beside Castlewellan Lough, and over from Dolly's Brae and Ballymagrehan, who, after the day's work, enjoyed going "a cailey." I hope my Gaelic League friends will forgive me if I don't give the correct sound of this word, but that is my remembrance of how they pronounced it some sixty years ago in the County Down.

Sometimes at our little gatherings, the "wee boy from England," as the neighbours called me, would be asked to read from the "Nation" a speech of the Liberator--the title his countrymen gave O'Connell after Catholic emancipation. I was always delighted with this; entering as fully and enthusiastically into the spirit of what I read as any of the company.

As often as not, in Ballymagenaghy there would be sung, to the accompaniment of fiddle, flute or clarionet, one of those stirring songs which, week after week, appeared about this time in the "Nation" from the pens of Thomas Davis, and the brilliant young men in O'Connell's movement known as the "Young Irelanders "--songs "racy of the soil," like the "Nation" itself, which stirred the hearts of the Irish race like the blast of a trumpet, songs which are still sung by Irish Nationalists the world over.

On the Sundays, the Bannons and their next neighbours, the Finegans, MacCartans, and MacKays, with their fiddles, flutes, and clarionets, supplied the chief part of the instrumental music of the choir--for there was no organ--at the little mountain chapel at Leitrim, where my uncle, Father Michael, officiated. The happy remembrances of those Sundays of my boyhood are always brought back to me whenever I read T.D. Sullivan's "Dear Old Ireland," which is equally characteristic of this corner of the "black North" as of the raciest part of Munster--more especially where he sings:--

And happy and bright are the groups that pass From their peaceful homes for miles, O'er fields, and roads, and hills to Mass, When Sunday morning smiles; And deep the zeal their true hearts feel When low they kneel and pray! Oh, dear old Ireland! Blest old Ireland! Ireland, boys, hurrah!

But nothing excited my boyish enthusiasm more than the stories of the Insurrection of 1798. I was too young to understand much of what my grandmother used to tell us about these times before she died. My mother was born in 1799, and was the youngest daughter of her family, but her eldest sister, my Aunt Mary, wife of Oiny Bannon, was 12 or 14 years old at the time of the Rising, and could describe more vividly what she saw connected with it than I can now recall incidents in the Repeal and Young Ireland Movements.

Listening to her, I could almost fancy I could see my grandfather, Brian O'Loughlin, leaving his home with the other Ballymagenaghy men, with their pikes and such guns as they could muster, to join the United Irish forces previous to the battles of Saintfield and Ballinahinch. At the time of my visit to my mother's birthplace, my grandfather's house was in the occupation of the family of his youngest son, Edward, and, as a pilgrim visiting a sacred spot, I have stood on its floor, as I afterwards did on the field of Ballinahinch itself.

My Aunt Mary used to speak of an incident which I have never read of in any account of the battle, but I am inclined to believe there was some foundation for what she used to tell us. In one part of the engagement it seemed as if the bravery of the insurgents would have been crowned with a victory as decisive as they had gained at Saintfield, when, by some untoward circumstance, the fortunes of the day turned, and, in the end, the United Men were defeated. Perhaps what my Aunt Mary told me may be some explanation of the turn in the tide of battle. She used to say that when it looked as if the United Men were carrying all before them, a portion of their forces called out for a "Presbyterian ('Prispatairan' she used to call it) Government," that this caused some hesitation among the Catholics, that after this the battle went against them, and that the day ended in disaster.

The story seems somewhat improbable, as it might be asked how, in the excitement of a battle, men of one religion could be distinguished from those of another? But this will not seem so unlikely if the circumstances arising out of the Ulster Plantation of King James I. be remembered. As a consequence of this you will find townlands and parishes and whole districts, where the soil is poorest, where the people are almost exclusively Catholic, and others where the non-Catholic population are in an overwhelming majority. In the United forces the men of each locality would have been drilled and trained together, and, in the same way would, no doubt, act together on the field of battle, so that, without any actual arrangement for that purpose, the Catholic or the Presbyterian would, most likely, find himself among his own co-religionists.

It is wonderful how the memories of '98 were handed down from one generation to another, not only in Ireland, but wherever our people have made their homes.

This has been brought home to me in the most forcible possible manner by a circumstance which has come to my knowledge only a few months since--so to speak--after a lapse of over a hundred years.

This is that General James William Denver--after whom, for his distinguished career, the capital of the State of Colorado was called Denver City--had for his grandfather Patrick Denvir, who did a man's share in the insurrection of '98, and, for his connection with it, had to fly from his native Down to America.

This information I had from General Denver's daughter, replying on behalf of her brother, to whom I had written to find if the family were of Irish origin. I had some doubt about this, seeing that they spell their name with an "e" in the last syllable, whereas we and all of the name in the County Down use an "i." The lady's letter was not only interesting but most welcome, as showing that they were not only of Irish but of patriotic origin. They evidently continue to take an interest in the land from which they have sprung, for the lady made some enquiries about the late Bishop Denvir, of whom I have already spoken.

Most of the United Irish leaders and a large proportion of the rank and file in the '98 Rising were Presbyterians, and fought and bled for Ireland with the same heroism as their Catholic neighbours, amongst whom no name is more cherished in the County Down than that of the Protestant General Monroe, who, my Aunt Mary used to tell us, was hanged at his own door in 1798. How is it that the sons of the men of 1782 and of Grattan's Parliament, and of 1798 were not as good Irishmen as their fathers? I think I can give a kind of explanation.

It must be remembered that the era of Grattan's Parliament and of the Volunteer movement of 1782, of which present-day Nationalists are so proud, was also the era of the Penal laws. Since then the Protestants have seen the Irish Catholic rising from the dust of serfdom and standing in the attitude of manhood. They have seen him gradually obtaining a share in the making of the laws of the land, and, naturally, becoming the predominant political power in Ireland--the Catholics being the majority of the population. I may be wrong, but I have a theory that many of the Protestants of Ireland--who once had all the political power in their hands, and did not always use it too mercifully in their treatment of the rest of their countrymen--are afraid that if they assisted in getting self-government for Ireland the power in the hands of the enfranchised majority might be used against them.

That this is a groundless fear is shown from the fact that no men have been more honoured in Ireland than such Protestant leaders as William Smith O'Brien, Thomas Davis, John Mitchel, John Martin, Isaac Butt, and Charles Stewart Parnell. The same feeling is constantly shown at this moment towards distinguished Protestants among the present Irish Parliamentary Party.

What has fostered the Anti-Irish feeling among Irish Protestants for the last hundred years has undoubtedly been the fell system of Orangeism, which has caused so much hatred and bloodshed among men who, whatever their race or creed, are now children of the one common soil. The Orangeman looked upon himself as part of a foreign garrison, holding the "Papishes" in subjection. He was armed with deadly weapons; consequently, the defenceless Catholic was almost entirely at his mercy, and the Orangeman was but too often backed up in his lawlessness by the law and its administrators.

This almost necessitated the existence, as a kind of defence against Orangeism, of a body I used to hear them speaking of when I was a boy in Ballymagenaghy, called the "Thrashers," which, I imagine, must have been some kind of a secret society.

It must have been a sort of survival of these "Thrashers" that my friend, Michael Davitt, many years afterwards, came across somewhere in the North of England. The incident, as described by him, was both amusing and saddening. He addressed them in his capacity as a Fenian Organiser. After they had heard him patiently, an old man, the spokesman, said:

"Tell me--do you have Prodestans in this Society of yours?"

"Certainly," Davitt answered. "We invite all Irishmen."

"Then we'll have nothing to do with yez!"

As my Aunt Mary could relate thrilling stories of '98, so could my own mother tell me all about the savagery of Orangemen in her days. She used to describe to me the attempts of an Orange procession to pass through Dolly's Brae, when she was a young girl, before she left Ireland. Dolly's Brae is a kind of rugged defile through which passes the road from the town of Castlewellan, which, running westward, divides the townlands of Ballymagenaghy and Ballymagrehan. It is an entirely Catholic district, and not at all on the ordinary route by which the processionists would reach their homes. Yet, in a spirit of aggression, and well-armed, as usual, with Orange banners waving, drums beating, and bands playing "Croppies lie down," "The Boyne Water," and similar airs, this was the district they sought to march through.

It so happened that the proposed hostile parade was not altogether unexpected. In any case, their approach was heralded by the firing over "Papish" houses, as the processionists came towards Dolly's Brae. From the heights above they were seen--my mother being one of the watchers--in sufficient time to have the people of the immediate neighbourhood warned of the threatened Orange incursion.

The defenders of Dolly's Brae had no firearms, as their opponents had, but they gathered up any weapons they could to repel the invaders. The Orangemen came on, expecting an easy victory. They had got well into the defile, and were firing at their opponents, who were in sight before them at some distance on the road, and into the houses on each side, when they were thrown into confusion by a storm of large stones and pieces of rock hurled down the steep sides of the defile upon them by assailants who had been up till then invisible.

According to the description of my mother, who was always a militant Catholic of the most orthodox description, and a strong physical force Irishwoman as well, the Dolly's Brae engagement must have borne some resemblance to the battle of Limerick, as described by Thomas Davis:--

"The women fought before the men; Each man became a match for ten; So back they pushed the villains then From the city of Luimneach Lionnglas".

She ought to know, for she was in the thick of the fight. The confusion of the Orangemen was turned into a complete rout, and they fled, leaving their banners and other trophies in the hands of the mountainy men.

For many years the Orangemen never attempted to go near the place, but, with the connivance and active aid of the guardians of the peace, they did at last, many years afterwards, appear on the scene again. The Orange anniversary was celebrated at Tollymore Park, the seat of Lord Roden, who was a sort of Orange deity at the time. Tollymore Park is some four or five miles south-east of Dolly's Brae, which is in the heart of the Catholic district, and, as I have said, far out of the direct road of the Orangemen returning to their own homes.

Yet they deliberately took this route. They were a formidable body, well armed with guns. At their head was one Beers, the agent of Lord Roden, and a magistrate who, for the "protection" of the Orangemen, had under his command a strong body of the constabulary and a detachment of soldiers. The ordinary Englishman, who knows the police as they are in his country as the guardians of the public peace, must not confound them with those in Ireland. The Irish constabulary are simply the permanent British army of occupation, well armed and drilled, and, physically, as fine a body of men as any in the world. These were the forces under the command of Lord Roden's agent, for the invasion, for such it was, of a peaceful Catholic district.

When the people sought to defend themselves from this invasion as best they could, Beers, in his capacity as a magistrate, gave the police and soldiers under his command the order to fire--which they did--upon the people and into their houses. Consequently, what followed was nothing short of a butchery, under cover of which the Orangemen wrecked the Catholic houses in the glen.

I shall never forget the grief of my mother, at this time residing in Liverpool, at reading in the newspapers the names of the victims who had been murdered outright or wounded. They were all her next door neighbours "at home"--people she had known from childhood.

The horrible outrage roused universal indignation. In Parliament the Irish members demanded a full official enquiry as to how this murderous business came to be carried out by a Government official. As a result Lord Roden and his agent were deprived of the Commission of the Peace--their offence was too glaring to be entirely overlooked. But to the friends of those who had been legally murdered, and the innocent people whose houses had been wrecked, this was a cruel mockery. Had the criminals been Catholic peasants, they would have been put upon their trial for their lives, and, at the very least, sent into penal servitude. What confidence could the Catholics of Ulster have in the administration of the law, knowing, as they did, that even where they were more than able to hold their own against the Orangemen, they were sure to be sufferers in the long run, seeing that their opponents would be backed up by the forces that should go to preserve law and order.

It is thirty-five years since I last re-visited the County Down. I took my son with me. He was nearly of the same age as I was myself when I lived in Ballymagenaghy, but I could only show him the site of Oiney Bannon's house. It was not the too common case of an eviction, for the Annesleys had the reputation of being tolerably good landlords. The land, as I have said, was very poor, in fact, if the people got it for nothing it would hardly repay cultivation. But it was picturesque, and therefore Lord Annesley took some of it into his domain, and these barren hills and rocks, when planted with trees, added to the beauty of the scenery. The dispossessed tenants got land from him in Clarkhill, not far off.

Since that time, judging from the Irish newspapers, there seems to have been progress in the right direction, for the little town of Castlewellan, where for a short time I went to school, from being a place where, in the Penal days, a Catholic was scarcely allowed to live, seems to have become a strong Nationalist centre for South Down. This was my mother's part of the country. I have seen similar paragraphs which proved to me that, in the barony of Lecale, County Down, my father's part, the people, though not so demonstrative as the "mountainy men," can still, as ever, be relied upon to stand as firm as Slieve Donard itself for creed and country.