IN THE spring of 1864, eight, hapless mill workers from Gilford, Co Down, hardly a 30-minute car journey from Drumcree, were brought before the magistrates.
They had contravened the Party Processions Act by "parading behind pipes and drums when leaving work on July 14th, 1863".
Like those 13 apprentice boys before them, who had slammed shut the gates of Derry in the face of duly-constituted authority, these were ordinary Ulster folk, the grass-roots.
Their prosecution by the civil authorities would set in train a series of events which led speedily to a revival of the Orange Order under the populist leadership of William Johnston of Ballykilbeg, and eventually, to the creation of both the political and military infrastructure necessary to secure the exclusion of Ulster from any Home-Rule settlement in Ireland.
Time and again in the remarkable and intricate history of our "narrow ground", seemingly small and insignificant issues touch the deepest of roots in the Ulster Protestant psyche - the determination to mark out that difference, that separateness, which distinguishes the Ulster Protestants from their Irish nationalist and invariably Roman Catholic neighbours.
There are actually two tribes on this island and it is the unwillingness of the Irish, Gaelic and Roman Catholic tribe to offer acceptance and accommodate differences which is the source of conflict.
William Johnston of Ballykilbeg recognised in the trial and subsequent jailing of the eight Gilford mill workers a fundamental shift in the attitude of the British authorities toward the two divergent communities on the island.
Since 1858, under the leadership of the Fenian Brotherhood, the tide of Irish nationalist sentiment had been rising. By the early 186Os, nationalist and Fenian parades were being held with impunity in the south and west of Ireland.
The British authorities had turned a blind eye to these manifestations of a new spirit of self-confidence and vigour among the Irish people. There had neither been government bans in regard to these demonstrations nor convictions of the organisers.
Only a week after the Gilford millworkers were sentenced, 60,000 Irish nationalists, in defiance of both the Party Emblems Act and the Party Processions Act, marched with green emblems and ribbon sashes to the laying of the foundation stone of Daniel O'Connell's monument in Dublin.
This form of appeasement by the authorities was too much.
At the opening of Ballyclander Orange Hall, William Johnston enunciated the principle that has brought Ulster to the brink this week: Every wrong is put upon us, because it is supposed we will submit to anything. We have not had fair play. We must have the right of publicly meeting in any way we please. We have been deprived of this through popish conspiracies, carefully concocted to get Orangeism and Orangemen put down.
On careful analysis, this echo from the last century reverberates with five salient features of the present controversy over the return route chosen for the Orange worshippers seeking to parade back from Drumcree parish church by the RUC itself only a few years ago.
THERE IS a general Protestant and unionist perception that they are under intense pressure from a sophisticated propaganda machine, and that no matter how much they give, more is always demanded - in fact, that there is no end to Irish nationalist demands.
The response of the British government to both violent and non-violent Irish nationalist pressure has bee ii driven by concessions: so many, in fact, that the broader unionist population fears its unwillingness to consent to Irish unification either by gradualism or sudden abandonment - carries little weight with either London or Dublin.
Thus, what is superficially a parochial orange and green controversy in Co Armagh suddenly engulfs the whole province.
Adding to the sense of foreboding among Protestants is their awareness that in a real sense they have been set up by cunning Sinn Fein activists who have succeeded in cajoling them into a stand-off, or worse, outright conflict with the lawfully constituted authorities.
What, though, did Johnston of Ballykilbeg mean when he proclaimed the "right-to-march" principle? In essence, Johnston sought to establish an Ulsterman's right to his Protestant faith and his Britishness.
When Portadown Orangemen are refused the right to pass down a main road adjacent to, but not actually through, a nationalist estate, this is interpreted as meaning that Britishness and Protestantism are not wanted on this island.
Irish nationalists are incapable of embracing the reality of complexity, and diversity: they are held prisoner by an Irish republican ideology which does not comprehend the actual circumstances, relationships, and interaction, between the two divergent tribes, a republican ideology which they refuse to compromise.
For Orangemen, therefore, and evidently in the light of wider support among the loyalist working class, the right to march is also the right to be: to assert the validity of their own folk culture and their own sense of place on this island.
Tragically for both communities, as in the past so in the present, aggression and defence dominate the political and cultural interface.
Mutual respect and neighbourliness, accommodation and acceptance are marginalised, with the result that we are all robbed of the richness, complexity and diversity to be found on this island, once known as the "Isle of Saints and Scholars".
But then, that was a long time ago, wasn't it?