[Hand of J. O'Donovan:]
Novr. 23rd 1838.
Dear Sir,
I send the name Books of Killinny {1} Kinvarra {1} Kilmacduagh {1} Killogilleen {1} and Doorus (1} which I thought I had sent before.
If Mr. Curry could do that part of the County of Wicklow near Dublin we would soon meet him from the south. He will think it a great hardship no doubt to go to the Country at all, but one month's work cannot distress him much, and it will relieve us a good deal.
We should manage as much as possible to collect the historical extracts every winter, and to examine the ground (Country) while the ground is dry and the days long. In this season the days are so short, and the roads and fields so wet that it is impracticable to do much in any one day, and the days will be getting shorter and wetter till after Christmas.
I did not meet a single Irish Scholar in Connaught except Mr. Hardiman and two or three priests, and I am persuaded that there are none in that province, at least any that we could expect to join us. Besides I would not trust any one but a man of sense and experience in our investigations.
This weather is calculated to make one cut his throat especially when in Ossory in which men were yearly turned into wolves in the time of Giraldus and Moryson; the former believed it Gospel truth and the latter thought it might be only a figurative mode of mentioning men full of choleric and melancholy humours who (yearly) turned out robbers and wood-kern!
Cambrensis states that St. Natalis* (Nathaile) left this curse on the men of Ossory, but I have no reference to a Saint of that name in Upper Ossory.
John O'Donovan
*I met a church of [edge of page damaged here] Cavan or Fermanagh and another at Inver Naile in Donegal. [It is clear from the Index that the damaged text indicates that these are locations of churches dedicated to St. Natalis].