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Grace O’Malley, warrior from Connemara

Sure as I am a mountainy man from the wilds of Connemara she once lived here among us. The pirate goddess who said no to the queen of England. She robbed them all in good time-The Spanish, The Brits, the Portuguese… She might well have lightened the purse of the Russian Czar if she could have gotten at him. 

Sailing the sea in the 16th Century with her loyal crew Grace O’Malley (Graine Ni Mhaille) massed riches beyond belief and in 1593 met and told Queen Elizabeth to take a leap when her majesty offered royal recognition. She then refused to bow to the Queen of England, who she did not honor as the Queen of Ireland.

In  her 2006 biography of O’Malley, Irish historian and novelist Anne Chambers described her as:

a fearless leader, by land and by sea, a political pragmatist and politician, a ruthless plunderer, a mercenary, a rebel, a shrewd and able negotiator, the protective matriarch of her family and tribe, a genuine inheritor of the Mother Goddess and Warrior Queen attributes of her remote ancestors. Above all else, she emerges as a woman who broke the mould and thereby played a unique role in history.