at 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