North of England. The incident, as described by him, was both
amusing and saddening. He addressed them in his capacity as a Fenian
Organiser. After they had heard him patiently, an old man, the
spokesman, said:

"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