Dublin, March 1, 1860.
My dear Friend—I have just received your note, and was glad to see your handwriting. I should be glad to contribute in any way to illustrate the literature of old Ireland, but my hands are more than full just now. I have too many irons in the fire, so that some of them must get burned. My boys are of no help to me, because they have too many studies to attend to, and I do not like to interrupt them. I have the eldest in Trinity College, and three others at the Jesuits’ Grammar School, where they are making considerable progress in classic and science. I have buried the youngest, Morgan Kavanaugh O’C. O’D., who died on the 11th of February, 1860, at the age of one year and forty-nine days, so that I calculate he went off the stage of this world without any stain from ancient or modern sin. I have no reason to be sorry for his departure from this wicked world. But his mother is so sorry after him that she refused to take food for two days, which has brought her to the brink of insanity.
I was glad to learn that Henry O’Donovan, Esq., of Lissard, had an heiress. He may have a house full of children now, of both sexes, as he has broken the ice, notwithstanding the curse of the Coarb of St. Barry. Our ancestor Donobhan, son of Cathal, was certainly a singularly wicked and treacherous man, but it is to be hoped that his characteristics have not been transmitted, and therefore that the curse of the good Coarb of St. Barry has spent its rage long since. But still if you view the question fairly, you will incline with me to believe that the curse still hangs over us:
1. Castle-Donovan was forfeited in 1641, and given away, forever.
2. My ancestor Edmond killed the son of O’Sullivan Beare, and was killed himself in 1643, leaving his descendants landless. Right!
3. The race of Colonel Daniel O’Donovan became extinct in 1829, in the person of General O’Donovan, who left the small remnant of his patrimonial inheritance to Powell, a Welshman. Curse!
4. The present O’Donovan is childless. His brother Henry has one daughter, who, if she be the only heir, will leave the name landless.
These four reasons, adding to them your imprisonment in 1859, convinces me that the curse of the good Coarb still hangs over us all. But I hope we may escape it in the next world!
John O’Mahony (the descendant of the real murderer of Mahon, King of Munster), who was proclaimed here in 1848, is now in America, a greater rebel than ever. His translation of Keating’s history of Ireland is rather well done.