Dear Sir—I have received your letter of the 5th instant, and was glad to hear that your enthusiasm had not cooled down. I was, since I wrote to you last, away in the beautiful land of the Saxon, where they seem to know as much about us as they do about the Pawnee Loups of North America. I worked in the British Museum, the Tower of London, the State paper office, the Lambeth Library, all in London, and in the Lambeth Library at Oxford. The State papers are full of most curious information relating to Ireland, which will be published some time between this and the day of judgment, for the enlightenment of posterity, but not in our times.
John Collins of Myross, the last Irish poet and antiquary of Carbery was an Irish Senachy without any critical knowledge whatsoever.
The tribe of the O’Donovans which he calls MacAeneas or MacAongus, had never any existence under that appellation, but the O’Donovans of Glenawilling, are frequently mentioned in old Irish pedigrees, under the name of MacEnesles, and in the public records under that of MacEnesles-Mac-I-Crime. This MacEnesles family was the third (second by descent) most important sept of the O’Donovans of Carbery, and the descent of their ancestor Aneslis, or Stanislaus, is given thus by MacFirbis:
1. Donovan, ancestor of the O’Donovans, slain, 977, by Brian Boru.
2. Cathal, fought at Clontarf, 1014.
3. Amhlaff or Auliffe, flourished 1041.
4. Murrough.
5. Aneslis.
6. Raghnall or Reginald.