Arrr, go hoist the jolly roger!
LONG John Silvers and Jack Sparrows across the world are today donning their eye patches and sharpening their swords as they celebrate the 10th annual International Talk Like a Pirate Day.
The now worldwide feast day was started by friends John Baur and Mark Summers from the USA who slipped into pirate talk during a game of racquet ball some years ago and decided that the world needed to do it at least once a year.
Two bars in Ireland have decided to join the fun. The Osborne Bar in Tralee will tonight celebrate its second ITLPD while Cap’n Marcio will celebrate his ber’day at The Bartender in Dundalk. But perhaps we should do more. After all, Ireland has a rich pirate heritage.
Ireland’s most famous native pirate, Grainneuaile, plied her trade among the myriad islands and inlets of Clew Bay, Co Mayo. “She was always a real person to this particular area, even though she was probably a bit of a myth outside of it,” says Kitty O’Malley of the Grainneuaile Centre in Louisburgh, Co Mayo. “Certainly in folklore she has reams of songs and stories about her. So she never faded away but I don’t think she has been allocated a page in history the way most people like her were. She was a very brave and very resourceful woman.”
Born on Clare Island in about 1530, Grainneuaile sailed the seas from an early age. Her nickname, which in Irish means Bald Grainne, was given to her when she shaved off her hair in an effort to convince her father that she could be as good a seafarer as any of her brothers. By the time of her first marriage to Galway nobleman Donal O’Flaherty in 1546 she had sailed widely and her advice to the O’Flaherty clan on trade and seafaring was invaluable. When her husband was killed in battle by the rival Joyce family in the early 1560s, Grainne took revenge, reclaiming a castle that had once belonged to her late husband but had been taken by the Joyces. Realising she would never be an O’Flaherty chieftain, she moved back to Clare Island with many of O’Flaherty’s men.
“She fought beside them and went through the same hardships and rewards as them,” says O’Malley. From her base she controlled the seas that had been left to her by her father.
As O’Malley points out, most of Grainne’s money came from taxing fishermen but she did also exact tribute from merchant ships around the Galway Bay area. This came to the attention of English authorities who in an effort to antagonise Grainne arrested her son Tibbott. Undeterred, Grainne travelled to London where she met with Queen Elizabeth and struck a deal. Elizabeth granted her son his freedom and ordered the authorities allow Grainne go about her business.
“She was sailing into the lion’s den,” says O’Malley. “But she was not short of courage. Herself and Queen Elizabeth seemed to have had an understanding of each other. Queen Elizabeth even offered her a title but she said no, saying that she was a queen in her own right.”
Grainneuaile is believed to have died the same year as Elizabeth; 1603. The collapse of the old Gaelic order was just around the corner. In England a new monarch, James I, was to order the plantation of Munster. He also outlawed privateering, a sort of legal piracy, and overnight, swathes of sailors were in search of new places to work.
“The pirates transferred their operations to the south-west coast of Munster when their ports and harbours were shut down in the south west of England,” says Connie Kelleher, an archaeologist with the underwater archaeology unit of the National Monuments Service. “There was no law to stop them here. It all tied in with the whole Munster plantation in the early 17th century. There was an overall transplantation of people from England over to Ireland and the pirates were part of that.”
Kelleher says the pirates “ran completely free” and worked hand in hand with local admiralty officials. Everybody seems to have benefitted.
“From an economic perspective it was hugely advantageous. This was a vibrant economy. From an Irish perspective, there were Gaelic Irish living there, they were getting access to goods that they would never have had access to before, because these pirates were trading with places like northern Africa, the Mediterranean, Newfoundland, the New World, and the Azores.”
According to Kelleher, the English pirates in this area operated from about 1603 to 1625 when their activities were pardoned by the crown. Shortly after this amnesty, Ireland’s most infamous case of piracy was carried out by Barbary pirates who attacked Baltimore on Jun 20, 1631. Before any defence could be mounted they had taken over a hundred people captive and sailed away. Most were sold into slavery and never saw Ireland again.
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