There came to me also a most famous feminine sea captain called Grany Imallye and offered her services unto me, wheresoever I would command her, with three galleys and two hundred fighting men, either in Scotland or in Ireland. She brought with her her husband for she was as well by land as by sea well more than Mrs Mate with him. ...This was a notorious rebel in all the coasts of Ireland. Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland, 1576

This tantalising cameo is one of many descriptions in the Elizabethan state papers of a most remarkable Irishwoman. This 'notorious woman' provoked awe, anger, revulsion, admiration and fear in the 16th century English administrators and military men who, by persuasion and by the sword, came to conquer the land of her birth. But in Ireland for over four hundred years she was destined to remain a prisoner of indifference and neglect as Irish history chose to ignore the unique contribution she made to the social, political and maritime history of her time. However, folklore, poetry and fiction showed no such bias and must be congratulated for preserving the memory of one of the most remarkable women of history.

Like her sisters, Granuaile was a victim of the male orientation of historical record and analysis. But in her case more than mere male chauvinism ensured her dismissal from the pages of history. By not fitting the mould determined and demanded by later generations of Irish historians, Granuaile committed an additional transgression. Until recent years Irish heroes were required to be suitably adorned in the green cloak of patriotism, their personal lives untainted, their religious beliefs fervently Roman Catholic (with an occasional allowance for rebel Protestants!). But Granuaile was, as one of her detractors wrote of her, 'a woman who overstepped the part of womanhood'. In not allowing religious, social or political convention to deter her during her lifetime, she simply did not fit the required historical mould.

There are many aspects of her life that could qualify her as persona non grata in the roll-call of Irish heroes. She brazenly superseded her husband in his anointed role as chieftain, thereby contravening the Salic law on which Gaelic succession custom was based. She assumed personal command of her father's fleet of galleys and was accepted as undisputed leader, living in close proximity with her hard-bitten all-male sailors. She traded and pirated successfully for the space of fifty years from Ireland to Scotland and as far afield as Spain. She led rebellions in the field against individual English administrators when they tried to curb her activities, yet allied with the Queen of England when it was to her political advantage. She attacked her own son when he dared side with an English enemy, trained another son so well in the art of survival that he fought with the English at the battle of Kinsale, the last stand of the Gaelic world that bred and bore her. Granuaile allowed neither social nor political convention to deter her ambition. She took a lover, divorced a husband, gave birth to her youngest son on board her ship at sea, made no distinction as to nationality when plundering Irish, English or Spanish ships. Granuaile, the 'chief commander and director of thieves and murderers at sea,' hardly fitted the rosy-hued picture of Gaelic womanhood painted by latter-day male, often clerical, historians.

Her role in the history of the 16th century was consequently allowed lapse into the realm of folklore and fiction. It is ironic that her name is omitted from the Annals of the Four Masters - the seminal source of Irish history, compiled shortly after her death, and in a place where memories of her activities were still verdant. The English state papers, on the other hand, contain references to her as late as 1627, some twenty-four years after her death. Such bias erased from the pages of Irish history one of the most remarkable women of the past and in so doing diminished our understanding of the period.

However, it is a measure of Granuaile's greatness that her memory at least was preserved by legend and by lore. Legends are not created about insignificant people. To be remembered in folk memory is as much a tribute to the impact she made in her lifetime, as any academic treatise. As to the factual evidence, it was left to her contemporary English administrators and generals serving in Ireland to record aspects of her career. These Elizabethan documents are now faded and brittle, their age-darkened, spider-like handwriting evidence of the passage of four hundred years since their authors put quill to parchment. But from the swirls and flourishes of these sixteenth-century scribes the story of Grainne O'Malley springs to life. When the factual evidence relating to her life is examined within the context of the traumatic times in which she lived, she emerges as a fearless leader by land and sea, a political pragmatist and tactician, a ruthless plunderer, a mercenary, a some-time rebel, a shrewd and able negotiator, the protective matriarch of her family and tribe, the genuine inheritor of the Mother Goddess and Warrior Queen traits of her remote ancestors and, above all, a woman who broke the mould and played a unique role in history.

The story of Granuaile is the story of a one remarkable woman's quest for survival and fulfilment by land and by sea, in a time of profound political upheaval and chauvinistic bias.

When launching this new edition of her biography, the Tanaiste, Mary Harney T.D., described Ganuaile as "...the original trail-blazer and mould-breaker. It is only now " she added, "that women were beginning to achieve in politics, business and the maritine field the goal set for them four hundred years ago by Grace O' Malley".

Buy Now from amazon