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Old 30-06-25, 17:26   #1
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Movies Cheeky Island Celebrates Irelands Swashbuckling Pirate Queen

Swashbuckling and Cheeky Island Festival Celebrates Irelands Pirate Queen

Achill Island gathering comes amid surge of interest in Grace O'Malley, the legendary seafarer who took on English forces 500 years ago


The Guardian 1 JUL 2025








The Atlantic foamed, the wind gusted and the pirate queen swung from the rigging. She was ruler again, at least in spirit, of this corner of the west of Ireland.








Achill Island




Five centuries after Grace O'Malley defied convention, and the English, by leading a renegade fleet, her descendants and admirers gathered on Achill Island this weekend to re enact and celebrate her feats.


An all female circus of performers and acrobats depicted her life and famous encounter with Queen Elizabeth I in an open air show by the shoreline where she once sailed.

Grace is our anti goddess. What makes her different from the other red headed female figures of Irish history is that she wasnt a goddess or a fairy. She was real a powerful, real woman, said Dea Birkett, the creative producer of the Day of Grace, which mixed circus, music and storytelling on the County Mayo island.

Saturdays theatrical premiere was the latest sign that Ireland has rediscovered a figure who was once written out of history to the point of being deemed mythical. Now her trailblazing life is the subject of tours, books, plays, documentaries and DNA investigation.

Born around 1530, Grainne Mhaol, or Granuaile, as she is also known, was the daughter of a Gaelic chieftain who led her seafaring clan through tumultuous conflicts with rival clans and encroaching English forces. She reputedly had a fleet of 20 ships and took a shipwrecked Spanish sailor as a lover between her two marriages.

Graces practice of intercepting and demanding tributes from vessels infuriated Irelands would be Tudor overlords, leading to clashes and the capture of Graces son, who was held hostage.







She sailed to London and gained an audience with Queen Elizabeth, who could have executed Grace but instead freed her son and allowed them both to return home, where Grace continued to intercept ships and died, in her 70s, in 1603.


The Pirate Queen Who Ruled The Irish Sea Grace O'Malley - Grainne N? Mhaille




Pirate Queen Pendant





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCSckpGE5OQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIp6doZ-jHw



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