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, particularly if Gaelic Ireland is invoked as a point of comparison.2 In the case of the Gaelic historical tracts we find in Ireland, particularly those prose texts which date from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, and are concerned to glorify a particular kindred, Scotland has none at all.3 In these circumstances the Scottish historian can find some 196 The genealogical histories of Gaelic Scotland consolation, not merely in the fact that many of these Irish sources contain Scottish material,4 but also in the remarkable outpouring of historical tracts in Gaelic
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