re 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 Da