Containing Granuaile: Grace O’Malley in Two Nineteenth-century Novels

Grace O’Malley or Granuaile, the sixteenth-century pirate and chieftain celebrated in Western folk traditions, has attracted renewed interest in recent decades, both in popular culture and from biographers and scholars. A Granuaile Visitors Centre now operates in Louisburgh, County Mayo, and she features prominently in the displays at Westport House, run as a tourist attraction by the Browne family—her descendants through a female line—and built on the site of an O’Malley castle.¹ The development of Irish women’s history has occasioned several explanations for her earlier marginalization in historical accounts. Ann Chambers, the author of a popular biography, believed that O’Malley’s reputation suffered from a clear misogyny.² More recently, Judith Cook has called attention to the difficulty that O’Malley’s dealings with the crown pose for those who attempt to portray her as nationalist heroine.³

In the nineteenth century, two male authors with strong political commitments wrote fictional portrayals of the pirate queen; The Dark Lady of Doona (1833) by William Hamilton Maxwell, and A Queen of Men (1898) by William O’Brien. They, too, faced problems in adapting O’Malley to their expectations and those of their intended audiences. Maxwell (1792–1850) was a Church of Ireland clergyman and Tory journalist who spent part of his career in Connemara. O’Brien (1852–1928) was a Home Rule MP and a land agitator living in Westport after the Parnell Split. Both books can be seen as “historical romances,” that is, as fantasias inspired by history but less bound to historical accuracy than the historical novel proper.

Perhaps this slippery approach to fact is appropriate to Granuaile’s dual role as both historical figure and folk hero; such an approach also gives greater scope for authorial evasion and self-indulgence. Maxwell and O’Brien employ similar strategies in addressing the gender issues raised by O’Malley’s career. They tidy her complicated marital history; attribute her political and military career to doomed romance; and contrast her favorably with a loveless and frustrated Queen Elizabeth. Notably, each concludes by imagining her retiring to make her peace with heaven.

O’Malley’s political activities are similarly re-imagined. The Tory Maxwell sees a sorceress whose occult dabblings are equated with unwomanly violence and seditious intrigues; she finds salvation in assisting the queen’s representative Sir Richard Bingham, who is cast as the incarnation of peace and justice. Maxwell emphasizes the internecine wars of preconquest Connacht and the sexual misbehavior of monks and chieftains. For O’Brien, Granuaile’s territory is a pastoral vision of peace, plenty, and piety, a land admired even by the fair-minded Lord Deputy Perrot, whose displacement by the murderous Bingham brings catastrophe. He presents O’Malley’s political intrigues as morally dubious, but reflecting concern for her people. Her abdication for a male and unequivocally rebellious successor mirrors O’Brien’s own dream that his agrarian and political agitations would bring a new golden age to famine-stricken Mayo.

The historical Granuaile was born around 1530, the only daughter of Owen Dubhdara O’Malley, chieftain of a territory in the barony of Murrisk on the southern shore of Clew Bay. (She had a half-brother of little political significance.) O’Malley had a son and daughter by her first husband, the Connemara chieftain Donal-an-Chogaidh O’Flaherty; after O’Flaherty’s death she returned to her father’s territory, settled on Clare Island, and assumed control of the O’Malley fleet. From coastal strongholds, she carried out piratical raids as far as Scotland. Around 1567 she married Ricard an Iarainn Bourke, a contender for the MacWilliam chieftaincy; they had one son, Tibott-na-long. In 1577, Grainne and Ricard visited Galway to make formal submission to Sir Henry Sidney, lord deputy of Ireland, who noted that she was the predominant partner in the marriage. When Ricard an Iarainn died of natural causes in 1583, Grainne took one-third of his territories as dowry, including Carrigahowley Castle on Clew Bay, her principal base.

In 1584 Sir John Perrot became lord deputy, and...