Some Facts about Griannua Uaile
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It is strange, considering her legendary frame, how little there is actually known about the pirate queen Grace O' Malley, or Griannua Uaile as it is in Irish. "The Four Masters" do not mention her, though it has mentioned her father, her husbands, and her sons, and except for a few unreliable folk tales such meagre information as we have comes from the English State Papers of that period, letters that the English commanders wrote home to the State Council in London. It seems that she was born about 1536, that is roughly about four hundred years ago, at the Castle of Rockfleet or Carrignahooly as it is called in Irish, a straighly built, four sided tower, three sides of which are surrounded by tidal waters, situated on the coast of Mayo. Her father was an Owen O'Malley, who was nicknames Dhubdara or "the black oak", on account of his swarthy complexion, which tradition says Griannua inherited, and he was hereditary Lord of Umhall or Umhall the Mhaille, to give it its full title, a territory which is now the modern baronies of Murrisk and Borrishoole near Lough Mask, and comprises some of the wildest and finest districts in Ireland facing the mighty sweep of the Atlantic in the West, and backed in the East by the rugged mountains.
Griannua's mother, Margaret was also an O'Malley from Westport and she brought with her as her dowry the small islands of Innishboffin, Innisturk and Clare Island, which faced her husband's lands, and so that their united territory extended from Killery Harbour up to the broad sweep of Blacksod Bay, and eastward from Innishboffin to Lough Beltraw. It is tradition that Griannua's father died when she was but nineteen years of age, when under what circumstances we do not know since it was contrary to the laws of transitory, she succeeded him, her brother being but a small child.
Also among the many legends connected with her there is a romantic one concerning her youth. She was attending a pilgrimage at the Holy Well on Clare Island when the news was brought that there had been a wreck on the coast, and though