ch of
the enemy, he was not likely to be seriously sought out for punishment
by the authorities of his own country. The exploiters of the New
World, under the title of merchant-adventurers, were for the most part
pirates; the Spanish galleons were always lawful spoil for the English
merchantman, who knew the trick of painting out the name of his craft,
giving it a garb of piratical black, using a false flag, spoiling the
enemy after some swift, hard fighting, and then resuming again his
real or assumed pacific character. In the light of her times must
Grainne O'Malley be regarded.

As a sea queen she is without parallel in any time; and if the stain
of their piracy does not attach to her English contemporaries, Drake,
Raleigh, and Gilbert, no more should it to her. By force of a powerful
individuality, she ruled a race of men who were noted as the most
lawless of all Ireland, men among whom women as a class were so
little esteemed that they were not allowed to hold property. An early
traditional account of this woman of the waves, which is preserved
in manuscript at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, describes her as
follows:

"She was a great pirate and plunderer from her youth. It is
Transcended to us by Tradition that the very Day she was brought to
bed of her first Child that a Turkish Corsair attacked her ships,
and that they were Getting the Better of her Men, she got up, put her
Quilt about her and a string about her neck, took two Blunder Bushes
in her hands, came on deck, began damming and Capering about, her
monstrous size and odd figure surprised the Turks, their officers
gathered themselves talking of her; this was what she wanted,
stretched both her hands, fired the two Blunder Bushes at them and
Destroyed the officers." Many are the deeds of prowess ascribed to
her, and so widespread was her fame that desperate characters
came from all parts to enroll themselves under her standard. Her
serviceability to the English, to whose extending power she had the
good sense not to put herself in opposition, secured to her the right
to continue her depredations.

With all her daring and the romance with which tradition has
surrounded her, she was not, nor does the report of her times
represent her as having been, handsome. In fact, notwithstanding that
the Anglicized form of her given name is Grace, its real meaning is
"the ugly." Her first husband was an O'Flaherty, the terror of which
name is preserved in the lit