At Dolly's Brae a battle was fought in 1849, in presence of a large body of troops, who remained neutral spectators of the conflict till the Catholics fled, and then joined with the victors in firing on the flying foe. The scenes of these struggles, such as Tillyorier, Katesbridge, Hilltown, The Diamond, etc., are classic spots now. Each has had its poet, and ballads are sung to celebrate the prowess of the victors, who were uniformly the Orangemen, inasmuch as they used firearms, while the Catholics generally fought with pikes and scythes. Hugh Bronte had not yet discovered the deep and wide gulf that yawned between Protestants and Catholics, and so he made light of the religious objections of which he had heard so much from Alice. But the Catholic friends of Miss McClory, who had heard the Pope cursed by Protestant lips almost every day of their lives, could not stand by and see a Catholic lamb removed into the Protestant shambles. They came to look on Bronte as a Protestant emissary, more influenced by a fiendish desire to plunder the Catholic fold than by love for their beautiful relative. Hugh Bronte, in his eager simplicity, wanted to supersede all opposition by getting married immediately, but so great a commotion ensued that he had to return to the kilns at Mount Pleasant, leaving his matrimonial prospects in a very unsatisfactory condition. Troops of relatives invaded the McClory house daily, and ardent Catholics tried in vain to argue down Alice McClory's newly kindled love. All the Roman Catholic neighbors joined in giving copious advice, and little was talked of in fairs and markets, and at chapel, but the proposed marriage of Alice McClory with an unknown Protestant heretic. The priest, also, as family friend, was drawn into the matter. In those days Irish priests were educated in France or Italy, and were generally men of culture and refinement. Their horizon had been widened. They had come in contact with the language, literature, and social habits of other peoples, and they had become courteous men of the world. They had to some extent got out of touch with the fierce fanaticism of party strife. The priest called on Miss McClory. Everybody knew that he had, and awaited the result; but Alice's beauty and simplicity and tears made such an impression on the kind-hearted old priest that his chivalrous instinct was aroused, and he was almost won to the lady's side. The centre of the agitation then shifted from McClory's cottage to the priest's manse, and so hot was the anger of the infuriated Catholics that the good-natured priest promised, sorely against his will, that he would not consent to marry the pair.