in the first place, that _Brin_ in the Welsh language means woody, and that hence the O’Brins or O’Byrnes must be of Welsh origin. But admitting that _Brin_ does in the Welsh language mean woody, what has that to do with O’Brain, the original Irish name of O’Byrne, especially when it can be proved that that surname was called after Bran, king of Leinster, who was usually styled Bran Duv, _i. e._ the Black Raven, from the colour of his hair, and his thirst for prey. Secondly, to prove that O’Toole is a Welsh name, he says that _tol_ means hilly in the Welsh language! and so does _tol_ in Irish bear this meaning. But what, I would ask, has that to do with O’Tuathail, or descendants of Tuathal, the son of Ugaire, from whom this family have taken their surname? The name Tuathal, signifying _the lordly_, has no more to do with _tol_, a hill, than it has with the English word _tool_, to which it has been anglicised for the last two centuries. Thirdly, to prove that the name Cavanagh is of Welsh origin, he asserts that Kaevan in Welsh signifies _strong_ in English. This may be true; but what has the signification of the Welsh word Kaevan to do with the name of the Mac Murroghs of Leinster, who assumed the cognomen of Cavanagh from Donnell Cavanagh, the son of Dermot Mac Murrogh, who had himself received this name from his having been fostered at Kilcavan in the north-east of the present county of Wexford? _Spectatum admissi risum teneatis amici?_ These errors of Spenser have been already exposed by Dr Jeffry Keating, a man of learning and undoubted honesty, but of great simplicity, which is characteristic of the age in which he lived, also by Gratianus Lucius, and by the learned Roderic O’Flaherty, who has devoted a chapter of his Ogygia to prove that Spenser, though a distinguished poet, can have no claim to credit as a historian. Spenser’s purpose in fabricating this story about the Mac Mahons was to hold them up as objects of hatred to the Irish and English people, as being descended from the murderer of Thomas à Becket. He never succeeded, however, in convincing Ever Mac Cooley, or any other of the rebels of the Farney, that they were descended from the Beares of England! Spenser also asserts that _it was said_ that most of the surnames ending in _an_, though then considered Irish, were in reality English, such as Hernan, Shinan, Mungan, &c. I do not, however, believe a word of this latter assertion of the great English poet, but conclude, with the simple and honest Keating, that, “as being a poet, he gave himself, as was usual with the profession, licence to revel in poetic fictions, which he dressed in flowery language to decoy his reader.” For we know that there is not a single instance on record of any Anglo-Norman family having taken any Irish names except such as they formed from the names or titles of their own ancestors by prefixing Mac, which they considered equivalent to the Norman Fitz, as