father's. In those days, as often as not, when a girl got married she
was still called by her friends by her maiden name. So, on the first
Sunday after my arrival, when I was taken over to Leitrim chapel, where
I served my uncle's Mass, I found myself referred to as "Peggy
Loughlin's wee boy." It did not seem at all strange to me, for I
scarcely ever heard her called by any other name. Indeed, some forty
years afterwards--when I was organising for the Irish National
League--I met a County Down man in Cumberland. He was, as I soon found,
from "our own place," as they affectionately call it. He was trying to
trace out what 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