A view of the life and times of Pearse Ferriter, and especially the part played by Richard Boyle, the Earl of Cork. A new work by one of the greatest poets of our time, and an unusual book which casts the light of scholarship on the lives and the minds of the Gaelic gentry in the time of great change in the 17th Century. History and folklore are combined with a detailed account of the poet’s milieu and an insight into literary and social conventions of the time. The author’s detective work succeeds in adding blood and meat to the bare bones of history.