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.