“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.