original work. Dr. Thomas Molyneux visited O'Flaherty on 21 April 1709 and left the following eyewitness account: "I went to vizit old Flaherty, who lives, very old, in a miserable condition at Park, some 3 hours west of Gallway, in Hiar or West-Connaught. I expected to have seen here some old Irish manuscripts, but his ill fortune has stripp'd him of these as well as his other goods, so that he has nothing now left but some few of his own writing, and a few old rummish books of history printed. In my life I never saw so strangely stony and wild a country. I did not see all this way 3 living creatures, not one house or ditch, not one bit of corn, nor even, I might say, a bit of land, for stones: in short nothing appear'd but stones and sea, nor could I conceive an inhabited country so destitute of all signs of people and art as this is." O'Flaherty died in poverty at Páirc, near Spiddal. He was survived by his daughters, and a son, Micheal Ó Flaithbheartaigh. See also Tadhg Og Ó Cianáin Peregrine Ó Duibhgeannain Lughaidh Ó Cléirigh Mícheál Ó Cléirigh James Ussher Sir James Ware Mary Bonaventure Browne Dubhaltach Mac Fhirbhisigh Uilliam Ó Duinnín Charles O'Conor (historian) Eugene O'Curry John O'Donovan (scholar) References Peter Berresford Ellis, The Fabrication of 'Celtic' Astrology, The Astrological Journal (vol 39. n. 4, 1997) O'Flaherty, Roderick (O Flaithbheartaigh, Ruaidhri), Vincent Morley, in Dictionary of Irish Biography from the Earliest Times to the Year 2002, pp. 469–70, Cambridge, 2010. Roderick O'Flaherty's Letters to William Molyneux, Edward Lhwyd, and Samuel Molyneux 1696–1709, Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, 2012. External links – annotated by O'Conor, and including a dissertation by him on the "Origin and Antiquities of the antient Scots" 17th-century Irish historians 18th-century Irish historians Irish scribes 1629 births 1718 deaths People from County Galway Irish chroniclers Roderick Irish-language writers Irish Latinists 17th-century Latin-language writers Writers from County Galway