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temporary, albeit involuntary, suspension of his identity, 87 he nevertheless represents, like Glorvina and Grace Nugent, the dispossession and political allegiances of Gaelic Ireland. 88 This is apparent in the associations conjured by his various names. ‘Ferdinand Sylvester’ recalls the eighteenth-century antiquarian, Sylvester O’Halloran (1728–1807), while ‘Netterville’ raises the spectre of the recusant John Netterville, 2nd Viscount Netterville of Dowth (d. 1659), and his father, both of whom were implicated in the 1641 Rebellion and consequently lost both title
(1633), the editing of which was to constitute in 1896 Standish James O’Grady’s most striking contribution to the Irish literary revival. Stafford had been an obscure traveller and soldier who, inheriting certain papers from the archives of the Elizabethan commander Sir George Carew, had assembled a vivid account of the war in Munster and the final destruction of Gaelic Ireland
). Correspondingly, as Joep Leerssen contends, ‘[d]espite its Morgan-derived title, the book is not at all “Wild Irish”’. Instead, with a majority of the action located within the hero’s upper-class social milieu, Leerssen maintains, ‘the only shadow of Gaelic Ireland is vested in . . . minor characters’ who remain marginal in and marginalised by the text. 3 Similarly, Jacqueline