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.