AN GAODHAL.
301
P. O. Box 188, OIL CITY Pa. Dec. 18. '83.
To The Editor of The Gael.
Dear Sir. — Some thirteen months
have elapsed since you published an
article in the GAEL, calling upon the
heirs of the royal families of Ireland
to make out statements of their claims
to the sovereignty of that country
and to send them in for publication in
your truly spirited and racy periodi¬
cal: I have awaited with a good deal
of curiosity to see if any person would
come forward in the literary way to
assert his title, but I have hitherto
been disappointed; and hence lest the
ambition of wielding the royal sceptre
should be held in abeyance by the
more worthy and dignified of the old
stock, I presume, with that diffidence
which should characterize an humble
individual aspiring to a position so e¬
levated and grand, to send you a syn¬
opsis of the contents of my title-deeds
to the crown of my native Hibernia.
It is now more than thirty five years
ago since an aged and very respected
member of our family transmitted to
me from Ireland a letter bearing the
Kilrush P. O. stamp and containing a
tradition which shows my descent in
the ninth degree from Hugh O'Neill,
"Prince of Ulster." The tradition goes
to show that Mary O'Neill, daughter of
the Prince of "Ulster," was married to
one "Cooey" O'Cahan, of said province
who having been submitted to the
pressure of local persecution migrated
with his family to the Co. Clare, and
settled in the western extremity there¬
of, at a place called Ross. About the
same time McEniry, proprietor of the
state of Castletown-McEniry, in the
Co. Limerick, was compelled by a si¬
milar cause to forfeit his possessions
and cross the Shannon and take ref¬
uge also in Clare. He with his wife
and family settled at a place called
Clochán-na bh-fhán in the vicinity of Ross
aforesaid. O'Halloran in his History of
Ireland, bestows a grand eulogy upon
the opulence, hospitality, and piety of
the McEnirys of Castletown, of whom
he says scarcely a trace remained in
his day. O'Heerin also in his ancient
topography of Ireland bestows a noble
tribute upon the honorable and worth¬
y status of that family. McGeoghe¬
gan's history of Ireland as well as
"Dalton's ancient Irish families" may
be consulted as to the nobility of the
O'Cahan Sept while Graham in his
Derriana gives the actual date of the
settling of the Ross branch of them
in Clare, where they are known as
Keanes; but, he states also that a
daughter of Sir Phelim O'Neill had
been married to an O'Cahan. Now as
to the tradition, it affirms that the
daughter of Cooey O'Cahan and of his
wife Mary O'Neill, above mentioned,
was married to the son of the afore¬
said McEniry, of whose lineage my
mother, Johanna McEniry, was the
eighth descendant. The names of the
connecting line of our ancestors in the
male order are all given with many
minute particulars respecting some of
them. O'Mahoney in his History of
Ireland, (Vide O'Donovan's Pedigrees)
enumerates the McEniry clan as one
of the five or six families among whom
the heir to the royal crown of Miles¬
ius of Spain must be sought. I may
be allowed to say that my grandmoth¬
er on my father's side was an O'Ma¬
lone, and the O'Malones, according to
the life of Anthony O'Malone, and Dal¬
ton's work above quoted, are a branch
of the O'Connors, kings of Connaught.
There is still something more to add to
testify that my descent has not been
"through knaves and scoundrels since
the flood," for my maternal grandmo¬
ther a Margaret Roche, descended
from the Roches of Desmond who fled
into Clare during the Cromwellian per¬
secution, and the Roches of Munster
according to the Abbe McGeoghegan
are descended from the Emperor Char¬
lemagne. From what I have above
written it will be seen that Dean Swift
was correct when he said that the real
Nobility of Ireland must be sought for
"upon the coal quays and in the liber-
