of their permanently partitioned domain. Although the dynasty expired in the mid-thirteenth century, Somairle's descendants—Clann Somairle—held power in the Hebrides for centuries to come. In fact, the later mediaeval Clann Somairle Lordship of the Isles, which survived into the late fifteenth century, was a direct successor of Godred's maritime imperium. The Chronicle of Mann, Orkneyinga saga, and later tradition preserved in the eighteenth-century Book of Clanranald, reveal that it was through Ragnailt's descent that Clann Somairle, and Somairle himself, claimed kingship in the Isles. Godred's place at the royal apex of the two dynasties who contested the kingship of the Isles in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries suggests that he is identical to the like-named man proclaimed as an eminent ancestral figure in two thirteenth-century poems concerning Clann Somairle dynasts. The professed descendants of this Gofraid were poetically conceptualised as ("the seed of Gofraid"), a Gaelic term that, conceivably, originally applied to both the Crovan dynasty and Clann Somairle. Later unease with a matrilineal descendant from Godred may have led to the invention of a patrilineal descent of Clann Somairle from a like-named man with enviable, albeit concocted, Scottish connections. Godred, therefore, may be identical to the anachronistic Gofraid mac Fergusa, an alleged ninth-century figure dubiously noted in the Annals of the Four Masters, and otherwise only specifically attested in later genealogical accounts concerning Clann Somairle. Memory in Manx and Hebridean tradition Godred's arrival on Mann is commonly taken as a starting point of Manx history. This elevated place in the island's historiography is partly due to his position as an apical ancestral figure of later kings, and by his preeminent position in the historical account of the Isles preserved by the Chronicle of Mann. In fact, this source appears to have been commissioned by Godred's later descendants as a means to legitimize their claims to the kingship, and the later historiographical emphasis that separates Godred from his predecessors may well be unwarranted. That being said, Godred is possibly the historical prototype of the celebrated King Orry (Manx Gaelic and ) of Manx folklore. This legendary figure appears in the earliest example of Manx literature, the so-called Manannan Ballad, an eighteenth-century text that appears to contain content of sixteenth-century provenance. This traditional account of Mann asserts that, following King Orry's arrival, and his subsequent introduction of the island's legal system, thirteen of his descendants ruled in turn as king before