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