ABSTRACT
Links between the two parts of the Gaelic world, Ireland and the Scottish Highlands, became particularly close from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. A number of Gaelic prose texts associated with the Reformation throw some further light on the relations between Ireland, Scotland and England during that turbulent period. The use of the vernacular for scripture and public worship was one of the most significant features of the Protestant Reformation. The advance of the Reformation in Scotland, however, placed the cultural unity of Irish-Scottish Gaeldom under increasing strain, and notwithstanding the persistence of Catholicism in MacDonald territory, one can no longer speak of a common faith. With the Lowland plantation of Kintyre and the almost simultaneous plantation of Ulster, this same crown drove a further wedge between Irish and Scottish Gaels. Despite his Scottish origin and his Gaelic pedigree, the policies of James Stewart were deliberately designed to undermine the alliance between the Gaels of Ireland and western Scotland.
