Part Two: Grace O'Malley: The Pirate Queen of Ireland

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to cool people that did cool stuff.
I'm your host, Margaret Giljoy. Sophie has gone through my
script and added exclamation points at the end of the sentences.
Who am I hided out the wisdom of Sophie today.
It's actually something I would In fact, you I love
an exclamation point. Don't reserve it for the ends of
sentences though beginnings middles everywhere. I once got told I

(00:25):
once got told I used too many exclamation points and
emails and um that fucked with younger me, and now
I'm like, fuck you seven exclamation points. Yeah, I feel
like that's like a good, like power move of like
doing the thing that you're getting told you shouldn't do
because it's feminized, which is like showing excitement and emails
is like feminized, and in a business environment you're never

(00:46):
supposed to show any kind of weakness or femininity. But
nothing says I have fucking power like continuing to do
that being like I'm actually it's like it's like sometimes
when people are like trying to pick on me, I'm like, oh,
here is where I'm vulnerable, and I like show them
my belly because I'm like, because I'm not because you
can't hurt me. You come from my belly and I'll

(01:07):
grab you with my clause. Yeah exactly, So fuck you.
This is cool people who did cool stuff and you
are kill joy. Yeah, and my guest today is Hugh
fucking Ryan. Could be a good joke. Okay anyway, sorry,
um what all right? Hi? Hugh? Hi? What are you doing?

(01:33):
Glad to be back? Yeay on this totally separate day.
It's not still raining, Yeah, no, totally. Sophie is our producer. Hi,
Sophie Ian does our audio engineering on woman wrote our
theme song. So if you haven't listened to part one,
I don't know what to tell you. I spent an
entire episode trying to give you the context and here

(01:54):
you are just skipping it. It makes me feel like
my work isn't appreciated by you a listener. How dare
you people? Yeah, you're gonna like really disappoint us. I
hope you're pausing right now thinking about what you did
and going back to listen to episode one. I really
think you should. So. In short, Ireland is being sucked
up by colonization, as if it didn't have enough problems

(02:15):
on its own, and our hero Grana Nawalia, who we
barely got to in the first episode, was born into privilege,
into a crime family, and now she's doing some crime.
And the English are trying to tell Irish people to
stop rocking cool mullets and mustaches, and we'll get back
into it. So Granna, no way is They didn't give
a ship about England trying to tell Irish people to

(02:37):
stop being Irish. The king could say whatever he wanted.
They were fucking badass pirates on the West Coast who
spoke Irish and Latin and or whatever they wanted to
like she wore pants, for example. She grew up to
cuss and fight and sale until she was sixty and
her dad was like, all right, time to marry you
off for politics because you got born into privilege as
a girl. And sometimes that sucks, but it seemed to

(03:00):
kind of work out for her. People like to conjecture.
I like to conjecture about the private lives of the
people that we talked about. She was handed off to
be married to some guy named Donald O Flairty. Donald
of the Battles was his nickname. Sometimes it translated as
Donald of the War because he liked to fight. His
family motto actually just rules its fortune favors the bold

(03:23):
of all cliches, it's one of the best ones. Her
family motto was like powerful by sea and land, which
also was true. My father always told us that our
family motto was suffering silence. But it's very Irish. Yeah,
that was yep. Huh. Donald of the Battles had some

(03:47):
of his own lands, but he was an heir to
even more lands, and he was he was real fighty
probably like like some of the historians are like, look,
this guy doesn't telling the guests about best guy to
be married to when you imagine like this, you know,
brood of a man or whatever. But but honestly, I
don't know, Like I found nothing that implies he was
anything but polite to her, And like maybe they were

(04:10):
both just super into it. She's not exactly not fighting,
and I mean, it's nice to have your husband go
off to war regularly, you know, you go do that.
That's a long way to sail. You go fight that war. Yes, totally,
And honestly, I think there's a chance they were both
super into it though, just like being a weird fighting couple,

(04:30):
not like fighting with each other, but like enjoying battle
because of what happens next. And so I like to
think that they both just like to fight and fucking
drinking cuss and Rob, because we have evidence that she
liked to fight and fucking drinking Cusso and Rob. And
she continued to funk whoever she wanted throughout her entire life,
with no reference at any point to any husband being
upset by this. Because she's in charge. So she was

(04:54):
shipped off to be a good wife. She's quickly in charge.
She pops out three babies, one with the best name ever,
Margaret or perhaps married, and instead of being a happy
homemaker lady or really changing to adopt the a flairty way,
she imports her family traditions to her new family. And
by family traditions, I mean she gets a bunch of
ships and she goes out and she takes other people's stuff,

(05:17):
you know, do what you know, yeah, exactly, stick to
your strength. Soon her and her new family and their
retainers because their nobility, so they've retainers. They're just robbing
the ship out of Galway. They just like show up
outside of Galway and every boat that comes in and out,
they're like, you know, they're like, hey, you want to
come in here. Well, we'll let you in. But the
problem is there's a lot of like cannonballs going everywhere.

(05:38):
Wouldn't it be better if there weren't any cannonballs? We
could help with that. I like Galway. It's where my
family is from. It's on the west coast, it's in
the goal tech to the part of Ireland that stayed
less colonized overall, in the Irish stayed alive as a
language more successfully. But medieval Galway was was a little
boot licky. The English crown had more control their overall

(05:58):
compared to most places outside of dub One. They even
passed a no mustaches law years before the King of
England told everyone else that they had to have a
no mustaches law. So, and also, there's two ways of
looking at this. There are a bunch of cry baby
snitches who ran to Daddy as soon as they started
getting attacked by Grania or maybe this like murderer showed

(06:19):
up and kept murdering people, and they went and found
someone who could try to stop her potato potato exactly.
Granna didn't call it piracy and murder. She called it
maintenance by sea and land maintenance, meaning um money that's
like owed to you, um, and it was a protection racket.

(06:40):
You know, you've got that nice boat full of stuff,
you want to land in Galway, we can work that
out for you. And they actually also did some value
added because the whole west coast of Ireland is really
treacherous to sale, and they had pilots and stuff who
would help people navigate to the waters. And there's like
some argument that she didn't really go pirate until a
little bit later. I think she was born a pirate

(07:02):
and died a pirate, and the whole time she's sucking
the people she wants to fuck. I'm sure her husband
was too. I really want what's best for both of
them and their happy little murder bandit family. Her husband
either let her take the reins of the family's power
or just couldn't stop her. It seems likely though, because
he just liked fighting, and so she organized everything real
well where he got to fight a lot, so no problems.

(07:26):
And I've rarely encountered an Irish family that wasn't mostly matriarchal. Honestly,
when you know, I know, it's kind of funny because
like this is actually one of the bigger sources of
tension between um actually even like Irish Celts versus Scottish
celt is like some stuff about matrilineality and patriolineality, and
that Ireland overall was a more patrilineal and like patriarchal

(07:49):
place and there's like worse inheritance laws for women in
Ireland than even in England at this point. But at
the end of the day, that is my experience as well,
that is my understanding of Irish culture. Official power to
the man so that he has something to hold onto,
keep him busy. Yeah, totally. Meanwhile, speaking of girl bosses,

(08:13):
Henry the eighth is dead and Mary tudor Queen Mary,
she got to be the Queen of England for a while.
She's the first Queen Regnant of England, the first queen
who's the ruler instead of being queen by being married
to the King Regnant, who they probably don't call the
King Regnant. She took the throne by military force after
being cut out of the line of secession, and she
gets called bloody Mary. And if you want to see

(08:35):
what she looks like, go into the bathroom, turn off
the lights, turn around eight saying bloody marry and look
at the mirror, speaking of seeing queer reflections in the mirror.
Actually wrote this essay a long time ago about like
transmiss and bloody Mary and like seeing the being afraid
of the woman in the mirror who it was the
first time I've really read about Mary Tudor, And it's like,

(08:55):
I don't really like royalty, but there's still like I
have a certain simple thief for the way in which
her like femininity was portrayed as monstrous, Like specifically there's
like essays going around at the time complaining about monstrous
regiment like rule by monsters because she's a monster, because
she's a Catholic and a woman. And to be fair,

(09:18):
she got the name bloody Mary because she had this
habit of setting Protestants on fire in public places, but
by burning them at the stake, not like personally walking
around with a lighter. She's been a little more creative
Burnt Mary or fiery Mary. Bloody really does not to
me imply you set people on fire, I know, and
she asked go ahead. The Brits had real problems with

(09:38):
naming things. Aside from not having the word mustache, they
clearly did not know how to properly name someone who
sets people on fire. I just know, you know that's true.
That is a really good point. And she's way less
bloody than her fucking murdered dad, Henry the Eighth, who's
like just famous for being murder guy, Like that's his
fucking claim to fame as that. And didn't he write

(09:59):
Green's Leaves? Did he? Really? Because really, all I know
are the wives. You know, it's bad when history only
remembers you for killing your wives, because usually history forgets
that you killed your wife. I know. Yeah. And Mary
Tudor she was really good to her husband. Her husband
was bisexual and he really liked to funk dudes. And
so she revoked and I don't know if this is

(10:21):
why or she just did it because it was right.
She revokes her dad's anti buggery laws. She legalized homosexuality.
Her reign was the last time gay men could legally
fuck in England for the next three hundred years. It
was a capital asterous step by saying gay and homosexuality,
I think our terms that we cannot quite really apply
to people living in this time, but certainly acts of sodomy. Yeah,

(10:43):
it's just you know, identity ideas, all right, this kind
that goes back to we're talking about the last episode.
Ideas of identity don't really make sense back then. Practice
makes sense material culture of what it means to be
a fag, if you will, But in terms of like
what these laws actually mean in the place that they
exist in the world, like I think we're often it's
really easy to sort of say, like they were letting

(11:06):
gay people live, they were not letting gay people. That
it's more space and it's not ever quite that. So
just okay, no, no, no, that it's it's quite all right.
There's the thing that you are the expert on is
a good thing to interject about. And you did mention
that historians like to argue, so I feel I have
to up to my reputation. Oh well, then I have
to not They're totally game and okay, um, anyway, men

(11:32):
could suck men for the first time under her reign legally,
so her dad was a fucking misogynous monster and she's
the one wh gets called bloody Mary. She also sucked
with Ireland a little bit, but not that much. She
like way let off the foot off the pedal of
the colonized Ireland and funk over one over thing at
least one history and I read talked about her reign
is basically letting off the steam and mustaches for everyone.

(11:54):
I guess mustaches and mustache rides, and that's a slogan
for a queen. She didn't rule super long. She died
from what was probably a very incestor uterine cancer. It
was a false pregnancy, is what it was called at
the time, which ties into the well a lot of

(12:16):
the stuff about how her gender ties into her rein
and kind of really negative ways, and she does. Granny
is like twenty eight or something. At this point Elizabeth,
her half sister, rose to the throne. Immediately everyone's like, hell, yeah,
let's go funk up Ireland, because this is the thing
that gets left out of like whenever I reached it.
That's like, oh, and what are these kings doing over
here in England and ship you'll read about them and

(12:38):
then they're like, well, and then they turned around and
murdered everyone who's just like immediately over somewhere else anyway, whatever.
I guess everyone knows that Britain's bad, So I hope,
I hope it's certainly something was drilled into me as
a child. My parents are so Irish. This is always
the story I tell that. On the morning of September eleven,
I overslept and so I woke up to my parents

(13:00):
calling me to tell me that my dad wasn't in
the trade center because some days he worked there, not
often occasionally, So pick up the phone. My dad is
just screaming on the other end. I wasn't there. I
wasn't there. I have no idea what's going on. I'm like,
what are you talking about? He sort of like half
explains what's happening, and then's like, just turn on any
radio or TV. So I do, and I get the
kind of picture of what's happening. We're sort of not

(13:21):
talking at this point. We're on the phone, and suddenly
my mother grabs the phone and the first words she says,
to be about nine eleven are this is the British
is fault. And then she went on a long and
absolutely correct monologue about British colonization of the Middle East
and the levant and the effects of the oil trade,

(13:44):
and and I was like, Mom, you're not wrong, you are,
in fact quite right. I do think there are some
more um approximate reasons. You know that we had some
involved in and she's like, right, all right, totally yeah, yeah, yeah,
But at the end of the day, this is the
British's fault. Yeah, my parents can find the fault in

(14:04):
England and basically any global event, and they're very rarely
wrong about it. You know, if you if you get
an empire that the sun doesn't set on some ship,
can get fucking blamed on you. And to be fair,
I think anyone who like listens to this knows that
I'm not like, man, you know what's great is the
United States of America. Like, no, it's a colonial monster, um,

(14:26):
but like it's just we like to shot on the
colonial monster that came before us. Yeah's exactly. Yeah. So
Elizabeth she sets up colonial monster things going on, and
she gets back to the surrender and re grants plan,
which is the give up your titles and then I'll
give you back your titles, but they'll be English titles
this time, and you could be an earl or whatever

(14:48):
the fuck. So this causes a lot of tension because
the clan chiefs the land wasn't really there's to make
that decision about. It's the whole clan's land, and they're
just in charge of it for a hot minute, but
some chiefs go for it because people are people and
everyone gets real mad at everyone. And the sixteenth century
Ireland is even more fighting and warlike than previous Ireland,

(15:11):
which is saying something I think, mostly and like the
OLDI storty times like this, it's mostly the richer folks
who are doing all the warring. The peasants get to
kind of stay out of it. I think mostly in
yie oldie sort of times like this, it's mostly the
richer folks who do the warring. The peasants kind of
stay out of it and just find out who owns
the land, swapping around and getting slaughtered on the side.

(15:32):
But mostly I think it's mostly the British doing the
wholesale slaughter of peasants. I'm not as aware of that
as being part of the way that war worked prior
to all of that, But Ireland doesn't want to be ruled,
so it's busy fighting itself. But it also says about
fighting the English. There's this guy shamed O'Neil, or just

(15:52):
the O'Neill really, and he raises an army. First, he
re irished himself. His dad sold out the family name
and swore fealty, dropped the oh in his name, and
then the dad mysteriously died and the kid inherits it
and no history. I be like, Okay, I've only read
one history that talks about this. But the history book
that like no point is like because he killed his dad,

(16:15):
but like, I don't know, it's because he's well, the
book doesn't even make the implication, but it seems so
obvious to at least have the implication. So he's now
the O'Neil because he has inherited from his father and
brings it back into Irish brand law, and he adds
the ode to his name, and he gets elected the O'Neill,

(16:36):
you know, because he's not trying to just take it
because his dad had it. He believes in tannistry and
all that ship. He might not have killed his dad,
I don't know, but he yeah, well, I don't know
what dad sells up. I don't give a shit. Uh.
He liked to funk around. He married a whole bunch
of different people. He kept sleeping with a bunch of

(16:57):
other people. It's probably part of the reason that the
brand law worked better for him. You know. It was
just funny because the Anglican Church, their whole thing was
like divorce, but Irish had fucking divorce. Yeah, but it
was a divorce that women could initiate. Nobody wants that. Yeah.
So he raised armies against the English. He brought over
hundred Scottish red shanks. Those are the actually mercenaries from Scotland.

(17:19):
He conscripted as peasants, which is like a big bold
innovation in forced labor. Uh. He gave them spears and ship.
He fought the hell out of English armies. He was invited, Yeah,
he was invited to London to negotiate a truce. This
is the first time, one of the only two times
that Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth treats with a rebel personally. The

(17:40):
other time is actually Grania. We'll get to that later.
And they end up when a truce doesn't last all
that long. And when he does, when he goes to London,
he shows up with a retinue of Gallo Glass, the Scottish,
not mercenaries, who were just like the fight he guys
truce Lass. Then it ends there's a whole bunch of
clan warfare minitary titles. Everything is really confusing. This is

(18:02):
my least favorite part about all ye old these sword
time things. It's like hereditary bullshit. Eventually it reaches the
west coast. It's a minor noblesh guy near Galway. He
surrenders and re grants to become the o Flairty, but
there already wasn't a though Flairty. I guess he becomes
the Flairty, but there already was an o Flairty. And

(18:23):
so the successor to the real one was grands husband,
Donald of the Battles, who by this point has his
nickname upgraded. He has gone from Donald of the Battles
to being the cock. Uh m hmmm, we're what did that?

(18:47):
You know? I don't want to make any of something
about the meanings of words historically say I'm sure this
referred to in Badman. He was very good with thee
he was. He was named after the rooster because he
was good at fighting, and he was arrogant as hill.
He took a castle in some fighting, and it got

(19:08):
called Cox Castle. So Granny and her husband lived in
Cox Castle. I've been to a place called That's very different, though,
I think where I would have gone to where we'll
get to what it gets The name changed to, so
he didn't get to live there very long. All this feuting,
he was out hunting and some people he just fucked

(19:29):
with found him killed him. He made a lot of
enemies during his time as the Cock, and so these
people who have killed him to go and try and
take retake Cox Castle. But Granta is like, no, I'm
I'm I'm good at this. You can't have my castle.
It's also a castle. So her and her warriors drove
them off and the castle gets renamed thereafter as Hen's Castle.

(19:53):
Y and the English I think they're in league with
her enemies. At this point, they tried to take Hen's
Castle and Grania is like, no, We've been over this.
This is my fucking house. This is my like fourth castle,
Like you really you're gonna take it from me? And
so it's just like hell no, the British are not
taking my castle. Legend has it, but biographer Judith Cook

(20:16):
thinks it's actually likely or very possible that this actually happened.
That she melted down the lead off the roof to
drop that ship on the attackers. That said, most of
what I've read suggests that the whole like poor boiling
oil and stuff on attackers. Thing about medieval castle warfare
is largely a myth. Really yeah, it's like overall, like

(20:37):
the like infrastructure involved in transporting like large pots of
boiling oil and stuff is like you might as well
just have more people dropping rocks and shooting arrows and stuff.
It's really disappointing. I have to tell you that you're
ruining history for me. I'm sorry, uh, if it makes
you feel any better. I got that from YouTube historians,
so probably they sat on a throne while they talked

(21:01):
about it. I mean, I got it from the American
education system, so frankly, yours is probably better. Of course,
fair enough so. But but before we get into more
of it, I do want to talk about what is
effective for siege warfare, which is sponsor of the show
tribute sches. If you need to throw a really big
rock or just any massive object, like a dead elephant,

(21:26):
don't kill elephants for this purpose, or I will hunt
you down personally. But if you need to move one
from one place to another and or interfere with a castle,
nothing really gets the job done like tribute shies. Actually,
by the time of this story, it's cannons that are better.
But tribute ches or what gave me money to say that, you,

(21:46):
dear listener, should go by a tribute. Don't make your own.
That would cut out big tributeche out of the picture.
Really need the marketing budget because candidates have come in
I know exactly, and they need your help. Nothing says
tradition like a sling that is larger than your house.

(22:08):
I know so many traditional game and then giant slings,
and then also whatever other ads are about to happen,
and we are back. So she's defending her castle. Fortunately
they didn't have trebys or cannons. I guess, I don't

(22:31):
really entirely no, I mean, I guess it'd be like
overkill because these castles are basically a house, right, Like, No,
I wouldn't put it past any government to show up
at a house with cannon never mind, but I could
totally see them being like, hence, castle, we don't need
a cannon. Take this handed, yeah, which actually happened a
bunch of times, just in general, when they try and

(22:51):
funk with Ireland, they're like, those savages are naked in caves,
and then they like naked in cave savages who probably
are not naked in caves are like, oh no, don't
come into the swamp. There's only two of us, and
then there's more, and then they killed them all. She
probably also sent a follower to swim to shore because
their hen's castles on an island to light a beacon

(23:11):
subbody in support from the fucking writers of Rohan, I
mean other Irish warriors, and they show up and drive
off the forces of more Door sorry English. And because
the English at this point are putting to the sword
all the rep anyone who rebels against the authority, which
isn't actually just a Game of Thrones thing. They actually
just went around and murdered everybody. They just put everyone

(23:33):
to the sword. Uh. It wasn't just rebels, it was
like non fighting people, women and children. Yeah, well everyone
everyone kills monks. Um No, actually I guess specifically the
English because they could actually wear male or plate armor, yeah,
or up their deck stot honestly. But yeah, and so

(23:58):
and everywhere that they've conquered, English have conquered become even
more corrupt and fucked up than all the weird fifth
Like Ireland wasn't doing great, right, I mean like it
was like doing interesting right, They were doing their own thing,
but the English absolutely make all of it worse by
an order of magnitude. But a second dark forces at
work to conspire to keep her from keeping Hen's Castle.

(24:20):
Even though she's driven away the British, and she's driven
away the people who probably her husband stole it from Ben.
She's no close patriarchy hm. Under Irish law, women can
inherit from their husbands, so it's not her castle. So
she has to pack her bags and go back to
her parents, and she's entitled only to the return of

(24:43):
her dowry that have been paid to Donald the Cock.
But most of her retinue was like, are you fucking kidding?
We're sticking with you. You're kicking ass you rule, And
so most of the Irish warriors in the Scottish gallow
Glass came with her back to her like moving in back,
moved back in with her parents. And so if you
at home, I had to move back to your parents

(25:04):
after what felt like a high point in your career,
you are not alone. The pirate Queen of Ireland had
to move back home. If you've lost your castle, now
you're living in your dad's castle. Well, fortunately, actually she's
living in her dad's other castle, vacation castle. Yeah yeah,
make that joke later in the script. Damn it no great.

(25:27):
So their parents are fucking rich as hell, and so
they're living in Belclaire Castle, the parents on the mainland,
and she's like, all right, well, can I have Claire
Island Castle and just keep robbing people? And they're like yeah, sure, Haun,
whatever makes you happy, and you start your little business,
yeah Etsy store. And within a few years she runs

(25:47):
shipping on the entire west coast of Ireland. And I
ran shipping. Of course, we mean tax anyone who wanted
to sail there and killed them if they refused to
play that pay that tax, which is capitalism. It's also
just kind where government comes from. If you think about it,
like it's we we folk hero this kind of banditry
until it becomes big enough, and then it's theo radical government.

(26:09):
Or if you're the opposite kind of person is me,
you go the other way, decry its banditry until it
becomes legitimate government. Sometimes it's also religion, though that's true.
That's true. Power structures almost like power structures have some
fundamental flaws. What I don't know that I wouldn't now
probably not, probably not. We just we should just find

(26:32):
the power structure that we like versus the other power
structure that we don't like, and then support it and
then get used as a pawn and then die, which is,
to be fair, a lot of what's going to happen
in this story with my restensible heroes, that she's going
to do that to people. But once again, there's actually
some value added to her. Running shipping on the west
coast of Ireland. Local pilots navigating you along the coast

(26:55):
is pretty valuable on this place where everyone keeps crashing
and dying, and she's knocking down castles with cannons, she's
storming islands. She's just conquering land into her family's domain,
even though like she doesn't legally get it, you know,
like yeah, it goes to her parents. I think, who

(27:16):
are the representatives of the clan at this point, And
this operation involves hundreds of men at her at her command.
She has thirty ships, and she gets the title of
pirate queen and she's not even regnant over any area.
Not only does Irish law prohibit women from official positions
of power, but her dad and mom are still alive
and she's still the fucking pirate queen, which is just
it's impressive. Like again, not a thing that I'm like,

(27:41):
everyone should do this. This is a good thing, right,
but it is a fucking impressive feat And then this
part might be legend, but it who knows. She finds
a shipwrecked hot dude from a foreign country and she's like, yo,
what's up? And they become lovers. Is this a romance novel?

(28:01):
I feel like before Yeah, and she just like kind
of like takes a break for a little while. I
think it's like a couple of months or something, and
just as like kind of honeymoon phase with her, like
new Boo that washed up there. You're like, I am
so overwhelmed from invading and conquering. I just need like
three months to like Netflix and chill in my castle. Yeah, exactly. Unfortunately,

(28:27):
it's dangerous to be her lover because he's out hunting
one day and arrival clan the mcmahans kill him. So
if you're ever fucking grand Wallya, just don't go hunting anymore.
It's not worth it. Just go with her. She'll protect you.
That's true. She heard of the ship out of anything,
but it'd be like really annoying because he'd be like,
I got this deer and then she'd be like, whoops,

(28:47):
I killed the deer and all the men who are
hunting you I know, yeah totally. Or you'd be like,
doesn't even like tell you that she's killed all the
people who are like trying to assassinate you, and you're like, look,
I killed a deer, and you're like, that's nice, honey.
It's like like three days, let's go home. Just step
over that dead guy. Yeah. So she doesn't like the

(29:12):
She doesn't like when her hot ship wreck guys get
murdered uh and the McMahon's. She waits for them to
go on pilgrimage to an island. She shows up, she
captures all their boats, she gets onto the island, she
kills everyone and killed her hot ship wreck guy. Then
she sails back to the mainland, storms their castle and
takes it. Don't funk with the pirate Queen, who now

(29:34):
gets a new nickname, the Dark Lady of Douna. Douna
is where this is taking place. The Dark Lady. I
know that's a share song, isn't it. It's also the
name of the romance novel that I'm gonna write based
on all of this. She was also Grana of the
Gamblers as a new nickname, because she liked to gamble,

(29:54):
both in terms of playing games and in terms of
taking big risks and everywhere she would go apparently like
she also did like legitimate merchant deals. She would like
a like all over the sort of known world at
the time, down to the Mediterranean and stuff like that,
and she would just like bring gamblers with her. I
think in like an alternate history she ends up as

(30:14):
Saint the patron Saint of Gambler. It's like you can
totally see the Catholic Church being like, no, no no, just
take her totally totally. So she gets married again and
again all the like weird clan feuding stuff sort of.
I don't like things where I have to look at
a family tree to figure everything out. But she marries

(30:34):
this guy who I think her brother, her sorry, whose
brother her dead husband had murdered. That's for it makes
for a complicated family reunion, right, But her and him
have a lot in common. His name's Iron Richard because
he never takes off his armor and he loves fighting

(30:54):
and rebellion. She's got a tight dick, at least for marriage. Yeah,
here's where cock. I'm just sort of noticing some trends
to the names of the men she's been with. Iron Dick.
The cock did the hot like pirate dude have a
he didn't have Yeah, he didn't have a name. He's

(31:15):
just a shipwrecked guy who dies right away. Because she's
going through life plane funck mary Kill and winning. Yeah,
and she's winning at the game fun mary Kill. That's
what's impressive. No one else knew that there was a
win condition. So she marries Iron Richard. He's got a
claim on some power to he's also an elected air

(31:36):
he's a Tannis of I think maybe almost all of
County Mayo. But the ship gets really tangled. And that
good Catholic country Ireland, which totally obeys the Church's laws
and stuff. They have a traditional sort of secular marriage
or trial marriage, which is legal at the time and
would be for another fifty years, where you can get
married for a year and a day and if either

(31:58):
party doesn't like it, you just call the whole thing off.
So they got secular married. He lives in one of
his castles and she sets up shopping his his vacation
castle to continue to run an operation. I just think
that's so smart. Like, I think we don't have enough
rituals for like the dissolving of things, the ending of
things that we all we come up with all these

(32:18):
rituals for beginnings, you know, and I'm like, a year
and a day, everybody knows it. And then you know,
three and sixty six days later, you're like, we changed
our mind, and everyone's like, okay, cool, yeah they honestly
marriage should have that built in. Um. Yeah, And now
I'm just thinking about that. That's like like, yeah, so

(32:42):
she might have then, Okay. So there's all these legends
about all of this, right, and so one of the
legends is that she like her husband's like off at
war and he like comes home like on like the
day and she's like, now, you can't come in, it's
my house now. But if that happened, she then gets
back with him. And I actually wouldn't put it past
her to sort of like flex some power and be like,

(33:05):
you know, I can leave you and I'm the one
who runs things around here, right, But she does also
seem to like him, and I think, once again, it's
just one of these things where she's like, she's gotta
type he's he likes to fight, and probably fucking she
has one of his kids. She she might have given
birth on the ocean. This part not entirely certain, and

(33:27):
then the legend of her says that while she was
pregnant during this marriage, she's in her mid thirties, she's
captains a trading vessel down to the Mediterranean. This part
almost certainly happened, and they were boarded by you know, pirates,
and she's like, way the funk pregnant, and she starts off.
In the legend version, she's like, could you all do
this one thing without me? And everyone's like no, we're

(33:48):
being rated, and she's like, I'm so pregnant and they're
like no, but they're going to kill us all. And
so she like walks up on deck like eight or
nine months pregnant with a blunderbuss in each hand and
just like can like drives off the attackers. Yes, I
think if you become king of the land, you need
to funk a horse. Then to become the pirate queen,
you need to give birth on the ocean. Like that

(34:10):
should just be established as the ritual. Okay, no that
that that works for me. And not too later she
has her fourth and final kid, whose name is Tibbott
and he has a storied life too, and it's possible
that she gave birth to him on the ocean. Meanwhile,
the guy who's above her dad, this again, the whole
fucking hereditary blah blah blah like kind of if you're

(34:31):
listening to this, don't use this as you're like a
little fill out the family tree thing. That's what you
have when you hire a fiction writer to run a
podcast about history. I mean, I'm not lying about anything.
And what I'm not lying about is that I can
understand some of this fucking ship. I don't care about
who's in charge of what. Meanwhile, the guy's above her dad,
he gives into English rule. He goes for the surrender

(34:51):
and regrant his backs against the wall. It probably wasn't
an easy decision. And this is the guy her husband is,
the heir of the English didn't and they would do
it like basically, they just I mean, this is what
they did. Later all over the fucking world. They show
up and they look at County Mayo and they're like, oh,
let's divide into tens wrong, drunk drunk, drunk, drunk, you know.
And and this turns all the clans against each other,

(35:13):
because of course it does, because you're giving people a
chance at power. But it's all a fucking game, and
they're just whatever, I'm really mad about all this stuff.
So the guy gives in surrenders and regrants, and now
he has to pay tax, and he has to provide
fighting men to the English fucking queen, and he has
to expel the Scots from the territory. But the Irish
like having the Scots around. They're really good at fighting. Yeah,

(35:35):
the Gala glass, Yeah, Granna. In the meantime, she keeps
pirating and running the shipping off the west coast of Ireland,
and then maybe she becomes a spy for the British.
It's really hard to know. The evidence. Evidence leans towards like, yeah,
maybe probably if she was, it was a messy arrangement

(36:00):
because she keeps fighting English people all the time. She's like,
I gotta keep up my cover story. I have to
kill at least five of you a year. Yeah, yeah, totally.
It's possible that she was a double or triple or
quadruple agent. It's also possible that she was just keeping
up a cover story by continuing to throw down in rebellions.
So there's a case that could be made that Grania
was either a spy for the British, a patriotic Irish

(36:20):
woman who supported tons of rebels, or just a really
powerful mom looking out for her family and her crime
empire through whatever means. We're convenient, And I think that
actually feels like the truest story I've ever heard about
an Irish woman. Yeah, I think it was all three,
but I think it was the last one and the
other two. I could feel that my mother on the
day I left home for college, the last words she

(36:43):
said to me were, don't join any gangs because you're
already in one, meaning being Irish, being my family. Because
she then clarified further, she was like, but especially, do
not join the Catholics, because we got out of that once.

(37:03):
Do not join the Unitarian Universe less because they don't
believe in anything. And if you're gonna fall for a cult,
at least have something. These are my mother's last words
before I went off to college. I've always thought they
were pretty helpful. Actually, yeah, no, it's a reasonable advice.
So the evidence that she's a spy kind of builds
more later in her life. But the evidence at this

(37:25):
point is that basically she gets away with running the
entire shipping on the West coast of Ireland. But I
actually think, frankly, the other the reason that this is
presented as to why it might have happened, which is
she's too fearsome to stop, is just as likely, if
not more likely. But her and Iron Richard do go
to London at some point for unknown purposes, well honeymoon. Yeah. Meanwhile,

(37:50):
the West coast of Ireland, probably all of Ireland didn't
really want to become England. It's probably the fourth or
fifth time I've said that, but it continues to be
true today. And they were fighting again, keep saying, so
they fought and she she according to reports and rebellions
at the time, she was for forty years the stay
of all rebellions in the West, but not yet she

(38:12):
wants to stay out of it and rob people in
In her late forties, she finally gets caught for the
piracy thing. The Earl of Desmond, down in the southern
part of the country grabs her while she's trying to
like do a piracy and he was, let's go with
not incredibly loyal to the throne, and the Queen knows it,

(38:34):
so he's like, how better to put on a front
that I am loyal than to capture queen pirate gran
and Grant spents eighteen months in his jails in Southern
Ireland and then his transferred to Dublin Castle, which is
the Irish equivalent of the Tower of London at the time,
and it's like the place for star prisoners, most of

(38:54):
whom leave by being hanged. And then suddenly she's released
without arch and we straight up don't know why that's suspicious.
It's possible that Queen was like, fuck you, she's my spy,
let her go. It's also possible that the Earl of Desmond,
who was trying to do a rebellion, decided that her

(39:15):
being a pirate who supported rebellions was a better purpose
for her than like, because she'd already been more useful
to him. Yeah, she'd already kind of he'd already kind
of like proven he was loyal by capturing her, so
now he may be set her free in order to
like have her be a useful pond and a continued
rebellion or whatever. I don't know. I mean, it's also
possible that basically they let her go in order to

(39:37):
like set her up to look like a spy. I
don't know, but that's I think the most likely is
that she was a spy and that's why she was
let go. But the other one has some something possible.
But as soon as she gets back, the English tried
to steal her castle. This has not worked out for anyone,
have they not learned? I know? Eighteen days later she

(39:58):
drives them off um and imprisoning Granna turned out to
be a mistake for the Earl of Desmond, because shortly
thereafter he's leading a rebellion. Honestly, almost by mistake. I
think he was just trying to stay out of some
ship that involved like Spain and Rome, where they were like,
because Spain this whole time is like, we're gonna fucking

(40:19):
take England soon, and they're like eyeing Ireland is the
place to start, and a lot of the Irish rebels
are like, fucking sure, whatever whatever it takes. Men, have
you come here and beat up the English? Fucking God
bless you. We're all Catholics here, and which is why
Rome was involved. Also the pope was part of all
this ship. But so like he gets implicated and all

(40:41):
this plotting and he gets called a trader. So he's like, well,
I guess I'm a trader now. So he becomes a
rebel and he rebels, and he asked County Mayo and
Granny in particular for help. Iron Richard, her husband agrees,
and he marches off. Granny is like, no, but you're
on your own on this one. You kept me in
a fucking cage for two years or I'm loyal to

(41:01):
the English queen in a spy, but I don't know.
She just drove off the fucking whatever. She stays out
of it. I know, I was like, I kind of
enjoyed these episodes. I start off with this like sort
of simplistic narrative in my head when I have you know,
like the Wikipedia version of this, well not literally the
Wikipedia version of this, the Wikipedia version of this is

(41:21):
impossibly dense, but the like the like cliffs Notes version
of all this is like fun Irish pirate lady Ho
Ho Ho pirates life for me. And then like you're like, na,
she's just messy. She's like she's on my my podcast.
Cool people, did cool stuff, but in a less heroic
way than usual messy people who did messy. Yeah, interesting

(41:44):
people did interesting stuff. Or we'll get to it. We'll
get to it. There's some interesting ship. But you know else,
it's interesting the plethora of types of oreos. There's like
so many types of oreos, and like if you go
to the grocery story, of so many options because capitalism
has provided with us with just so many options, and

(42:08):
oreos are all vegan. That's true. Actually I hate except
for like a except for a couple a couple of kinds.
I'm sure that the meat one. Yeah, Margaret, you're the
one who told me that, And I was like, that's
so beautiful. I know it's it's a cookie that won't
hurt my stomach. I'm not trying to actually turn this

(42:29):
into any kind of actual ad, but man, now I
kind of wish I had some oreos and milk. I know,
it sounds really really relaxing, like today, this is like
both this podcast well important, like capitalism provides us so
many options and including the options that you're about to
listen to. Are you excited here, Ryan for the capitalism

(42:52):
that is integraly tied into the narrative of telling history
in the modern world. I'm sorry, visions of oreos are
just dancing in my head. Now. That's that's it. I
can't talk anymore about Ireland. I just have to name
various kinds of over double stuff. Then oreo birthday cake
and spice bullshit. Oreo birthday cake ones are nasty. The

(43:15):
dark chocolate ones are incredible. Oh my god, I'm so hungry.
My day we had oreos and there was one kind
of Oreo. It's still the attend Yeah, God's Oreo is
still the best Oreo. The good Catholic spirits of the
middle Jesus on one side, God on the other. Exactly. Actually,

(43:38):
every box of Oreos is blessed by someone at at
least the bishop level, two eucharists, with just like a
little bit of cream in between. Here's some ads. Hi,

(43:58):
we're back. We spend the whole break talking about oreos.
We really did. We learned so much. There's a whole
podcast worth of information about oreos in that break. You're
missing out, listen, you really are. And you know who
else is missing out is the Earl of Desmond, because
no oreos for him. Yeah, do you think he deserved

(44:20):
an oreo. I don't well, you know, okay, okay to
his I was gonna say he like did lock up
gran but she showed up on a ship with like
people with swords and ship and was like, yo, fuck
you give me give me your stuff. And he was like, no,
I don't want to. You're going to You're going to
jail instead. And I'm not like a big jail person.
But if I if I owned a jail and someone

(44:43):
was like, I'm gonna kill you unless you give me
your stuff, and I'm able to like be like not
just kidding in jail. And then he led a rebellion.
So I don't know. So you're saying you would give
him an oreo, yes, but not a one oreo. No,
not a double stuff. There's some double stuff deserving people.
That sounds negative, but I mean it positively. Coming up.

(45:06):
I'll stop making oreo jokes now, I'll keep them in
my head. So the Earl of Desmond, he has a rebellion.
It's called Desmond's rebellion or whatever. But there's a rebellion
every like thirty seconds, so it gets real confusing. Like literally,
there's multiple Burke rebellions, several of which happened during this

(45:27):
but if you google Burke rebellion, you get like some
ship that happened two d years earlier is the primary one,
even though there's like numerous major ones that fundamentally changed
some of the politics, and anyway, not a stable place
because it's in the middle of being absolutely destroyed by
its neighbor Iron. Richard marches off to go help Granny
is like, fuck you, he locked me in a fucking cage.

(45:48):
Funk off. And what's really interesting is that all of
the official papers that talk about these people at this
point they stop referring to Granny as Richard's wife, and
then instead they talk when they talk about Richard, they're like,
you know, Ronnie's husband, Oh, he became the more famous, Yeah,
even though he's like literally the like royalty, you know.

(46:09):
And there's a ton of written records about her and
Richard showing up to big important meetings and people like
taking five seconds to go from like why is this
guy's wife here to just talking to her about everything
and leaving him out of it. Richard doesn't do well
in this rebellion, and Grania steps in and negotiates his
surrender so that he doesn't lose everything, like especially as
life and the English are murdering the ship out of everybody,

(46:32):
Famine is driving across the country, and there's all these
reports about poor Irish peasants who have nothing to their
name but a single cow, and there's like, well fuck it,
I'd better to die with some dignity in battle and surrendering.
Irish warriors are being slaughtered in mass often in these
like come negotiate a surrender and we'll all you'll all
be taken care of, and by taking care of, we

(46:53):
mean murdered. And the Earl of Desmond's rebellion fails, Iron Richard.
He gets a chance to become the mc william, the
chief of a huge chunk of county Mayo, because the
guy he's the Tannis Sto goes and dies. But England
supports the other guy because they don't give a ship
about elective monarchy. They like their non elective monarchy, hereditary monarchy.

(47:18):
They like women throwing swords out of Yeah, yeah, I
mean better than either of these systems. Literally, picking a
random person who doesn't want to be in charge is
probably a better system. But anyway, finally, Granny is like, okay,
I'm fighting the British and I stand by my guy

(47:39):
and or my chance at greater political power. So all
of this like, oh she let all these rebellions I
think she did throw. I mean she's already fought the
British off numerous times when they try and take away
her castle. Yeah, all of Ireland instead of getting pacified
by all this scorched earth policy and famine and murder
everyone you see thing, they're just fucking mad. So Grandia

(48:01):
raises an army. All the clans of County Mayo are like, yeah,
this is the guy we elected, not that fucking boot
liquor over there. And so England looks at the like
two thousand fucking armed people in County Mayo, which is
like a backwater from their point of view, and it's like, whoops,
are bad. We met Iron Richard. He's a guy whoever

(48:22):
you want. Iron Richard is now the McWilliam. But he
does it. It's it's it's within the Irish, within the
English system. He doesn't really given to the English system
at any point. But he's like, they're like, you're a guy,
and he's like, what you know. He gets to be
that for a few years until fifty six when he

(48:44):
goes and dies. Uh, I cannot It's not mentioned in
any of the three places I looked how he dies,
just that he dies in eighty six. So my money
is on out hunting, not actually, I assume he just
died of battle or old age and pooping really hard. Yeah, yeah, whooping, whooping,
like whooping and hollereen no more like trying to take

(49:07):
a ship and then a heart attack. I feel like
that's how you cut that in detail. You cut out
if you're a king who dies, you know, like nobody,
nobody if he died hunting or fighting. Everybody like, oh,
there's a ballad. When they don't talk about it, you know,
it's like, actually he tripped and shoved his scissor through
his eye. Know that that tracks. But Gran can't inherit

(49:30):
because of course she's a girl. So she fox off
with some of her retinue and she stays involved in everything,
but her power is starting to wane because she doesn't
have access to the ostensibly legitimate authority of her husband anymore.
And England fox with the secession again, and rebellions are everywhere,
which the English, especially this new guy on the scene,
and maybe he's not newbody starts being relevant to our story.

(49:52):
His name is Bingham. He's a behind the bastard's level,
absolute monster. He is behind the killing everyone who's surrendering.
He's the one where I got that piece about like
how they like talked about referring to Irish women and
children as prey animals, you know. Um and and so

(50:13):
this time Grant is like in it to win it.
And it's called the Burke Rebellion. It's against Bingham, and
she's throwing downside alongside her sons and her son in
law whose name is the Devil's Hook. And I don't
know why, I'm going to assume that he had a
really funny shape penis. Yes, that is uh. And and

(50:37):
I don't want to shame anyone who happens to have
a devil's hook. You should be proud. That sounded sarcastic.
I actually shame. Yeah, yeah, no, no no no, it's
good enough to get a nickname made out of it, totally,
the cock Iron Richard, the Devil's Hook. It's clear that
she's collecting a certain type of man around her, is
all I'm saying. That's I mean, she just straight up

(51:00):
she finds these like strong, brave, not specifically ambitious, but
not not ambitious men, and it is like, yeah, sort
of like an army of Instagram models. Yeah, they're not
going to go far. They're kind of replaceable. They all
have funny nicknames. Exactly. One of her sons, Owen, he

(51:22):
wasn't even a rebel, and being him captures him and
kills him pretty cruelly, like they tie him up and
stab him to death while he's tied up and gran
During this Burke's rebellion, she does what she does best.
She runs things and she sails. In this case, it
seems like her main task is bringing Scott's over to
fight and just like running, like running soldiers back and forth,

(51:43):
Glasgows and Red Shanks both. She's negotiating alliances. She's rescuing
people like you need a boat, and she's somehow they're
you know, she's just sucking everywhere doing everything. She's in
her fifties at this point, and she has grandkids. You're
just staring into the water and say Grayson Melly, Grayson, Mally,
Grayson Maally in her it just comes and it's like
I'm going to save you and take all your money

(52:05):
and any hot guys. Yeah, ah, it's worth it, but barely,
you know. Yeah, she gets captured. They build a special
gallows just for her. They kill a bunch of the
other people she's captured with right off, but they hold
on to her for a couple of weeks and they
build a special gallows and she's like, oh, I'm gonna die,
and she goes about getting ready to die, and then

(52:28):
at the last minute there's a reprieve and she's not hanged.
History does not know why. One version that is not
very likely is that the Devil's hook her son in
law convinces Being him to let her go. Beingham is
not to let him go type type guy. He fucking
hates her. Another version is that a royal reprieve showed

(52:49):
up while she was walking to the gallows. This is
generally seen as um more likely, and she was either
working for the British or Double Agency and or whatever
because she's in the middle of leading a rebellion and
it's them and like, I mean my cover story, I
don't know. I feel like there's a line, right, but
maybe there isn't for a spy, like can you show
up with two found like they didn't have that many fighters,

(53:12):
and she goes and gets two thousand of them and
brings them, you know. And also like what does the
British gain out of saving her at that point? Right?
She is a spy, So the main thing she's theoretically
a spy about is actually not Oh this kind of
makes it makes sense. She's not necessarily a spy about
Irish rebels. She's a spy about what's happening in the

(53:33):
shipping and specifically like what Spanish ships and ship are doing.
This is what is conjectured. No one knows that she
spied anything, right, but that is the lake. But and
so it would makes sense that she's like, well, I'm
kind of a spy about this one thing, but like
I don't want them to kill my fucking kid, you know.
And the Burke rebellion is crushed. Everyone gets massacred by

(53:56):
the British. There's a soldier, like a random British soldier
who wrote this letter that's basically like I'm so tired
of killing everyone. And he's just after they're putting all
the men, women and children to the sword. Like there's
the letters, like they were trying to run away, but
we had to like chase them into water and watch
them drown and then stab everyone he survived. I feel
like that letter could be sent from basically every war. Yep,

(54:21):
the British, they're not done murdering the ship out of everyone.
Empires don't get tired of that ship, even if individual
people do. In the Spanish tried to attack England. They
hope to use Ireland as kind of a stepping stone,
but mostly they just go for England, and they get
this armata of a hundred and thirty ships. England beats
the ship out of this armata. England is good at

(54:42):
navy's It's kind of like, don't invade Russia by land,
have land war, and and don't um don't try to
fight England. In specifically a naval context, the armada fleds
flees home after getting wrecked, but it gets caught up
in the storms, and twenty four ships are wrecked on

(55:04):
the west coast of Ireland, and hundreds or thousands of
Spanish sailors wash up alive on the coast of Ireland.
So the English say, everyone who sees a Spanish person
is legally obliged to murder the Spanish person. If you don't,
we will murder you, which is one of the like
rudest laws I've ever heard, you know, And it worked.

(55:28):
Spaniards got murdered and mass but some were moved illicitly
across the island and over to Scotland and made it
home and they have amazing stories about their time in
Ireland being helped by rebels. This is actually where the
story I told earlier about the like Spaniard who's like
fleeing across Ireland, who like hangs out in a sweat
lodge with naked ladies, and it's just like, huh, this
is just the thing, um and uh, I don't know,

(55:52):
and so Ireland is now like everyone who helps them
is now a rebel because not murdering some random guy
who's half dead it makes you a rebel At this point,
if you see something kills something, keep calm and murder.
That actually is colonization's overwhelming urge, right, Bigham, the guy

(56:20):
who just put down Burke's rebellion, Uh, he was really
in the murdering Spaniards, like extra super into it. As
for the Ohaya, as it depends on who you ask,
they either did all the murdering too in order to
stay safe or they were a big part of helping
people and get safely. Scotland kind of depends on whether
people want Grant to be a hero or not. My
money is actually a little bit on the ladder, partly

(56:42):
because I want her to be a hero, but but
especially because they fucking hate Bingham and everything he stands for.
And they are world class smugglers and sailors, so if
anyone could do that, it would be them. If anyone
has a motive to do it, it would be them.
And if anyone makes their living by walking around and
looking for shipwrecks, it's them. So I don't know. And

(57:05):
Bingham decided they did it. Go ahead, always I believe
you sold me. Bingham also convinced. He decides that they're
all trailers. He starts, and so he starts rounding up
a bunch of the Awalias and saying your lands are forfeit.
So there's another rebellion. You were thinking, I don't know

(57:25):
if she's not even too far up. Too many rebellions.
But there's more, and this is the largest. It's a
new Burke's rebellion. Two three dred Men march on rock Fleet.
Bad bad guys, in English whatever. They march on rock Fleet,
which is where Grants hold up after the death of
her second husband and sort of like you know, retreat castle.
And this small army that is marching on her is

(57:47):
led by a name, a man with the most unfortunate
name for a bad person to have, John Brown. Oh John.
Along the way, they murder the ship out of every one, men,
women and children. This is where they start referring to
them as prey. That's how we don't remember this job. Yeah,
he had an e at the end of his name,
at the end of Brown n No Brownie that sounded yep.

(58:14):
Uh fuck so the people. So the people gathered up
their numbers and attacked them and killed them, just fucking
That's the end of John Brown. You walk around the
countryside murdering people, and people are gonna murder you. The
lesson you gotta learn early in life. All the berkxcepts,
which include the Owagas they gather their warriors and they

(58:35):
head off, they take Galway. They show up at Galway
and they're like, hey, you're gonna support our rebellion, right,
and always like yes whatever. Uh. Grans pirates do some
rating for supplies along the coast. They no longer run
the whole West coast at this point, but there's still
like nothing to funk with. Granny and her son are
off to Scotland to go get some more fighty guys.

(58:58):
The English are like sucks, and they try for a
truce and the rebels make their demands, get rid of Bingham,
let us keep electing our leaders instead of doing your
weird British ship. The elected leader gets called the blind Abbot.
I don't think he was blind. People had names. He
also might not have been an abbot. There weren't a

(59:19):
lot of names back then. You got distinguished between the many,
you know, Dermots and gran and I have like seven
names totally. Queen of England is like, no, that's too much.
So I'm gonna just send a thousand soldiers plus two
Irish people and go kill you all. And and they're like, oh,
and it's gonna be easy to kill you all because

(59:39):
you're all like poor and dumb. And so the Irish
sucked them up for a while. Um they like lead
them into traps, like they put a couple of guys
in the road and they're like, oh, no, the English
are coming, let's run into the swamps. Hopefully they won't
chase us into these swamps, and they like ambush the
ship out of him. But unfortunately, and here's one of

(59:59):
your problems with hierarchy, the blind Abbot is part of
this particular ambush on the swamps and he uh, he
loses a foot in the fighting, or he gets it,
doesn't get like hacked off, but he he guess wounded
and he has to get it amputated. Call him the
one know, they call him the guy who disappeared from history,
stopped trying to lead a rebellion and like just try

(01:00:21):
to live quietly in peace for the rest of his life.
He like most of us, totally he ran up who
now identify as tiredly got really in a history, got
a couple of swords on his walls. Still though, Yeah,
like I used to do that ship. I fucking tell

(01:00:42):
the younger people when they listen, rebel, you can take
the name Burke's Rebellion. I did that twice. Yeah, And
then even worse than that, one of Granny's sons went
traitor and joined the English and Grant is like, fuck
you forever, and it's like I'm going to find that
kid and teach him a lesson. I don't believe she

(01:01:02):
ever does. Bingham traps Grana on an island and confiscates
her fleet, and everything just sucks. The whole country is
fucked poor, everyone's dead, England's in charge, she's like sixty
years old, She's largely defeated. And here's where the three
Hues show up on the scene. I promise you three
people named Hugh told you they're all right. One point

(01:01:24):
right at the end. There's Hugh O'Neill, the Earl of Tyrone,
and he's this English educated irishman who pretends to be
the loyal to clean, loyal to the queen, but he's
plotting rebellion. And then yeah, I'm going to rate the Hues. Okay, okay.
Then there's this bud red Hugh O'Donnell. He's got a
good name, he does, who is also like, we better

(01:01:46):
fucking do something or we're all going to die because
he's English or monsters. That's all I got on him.
And then there's Hugh McGuire, who just showed up with
a thousand fighters to rate some of Bingham's stuff and
ends up a rebel. Somehow, I mostly included their names
because they're all named Hue. I appreciate that. I'm gonna
I'm gonna pick Red Hue as my favorite because you know,

(01:02:08):
he's got a little bit more of a fun name,
and you said you don't know much about him, so
I'm going to assume that he was the best of them. Yeah,
I think so, actually, um. Yeah, And they're mostly tangential
except Hugh O'Neill, who's gonna he's not a big part
of this story. Is a big part of what happens
after this story. There's a nine years war. It's called
the nine Years War. Be sad if they called it
like the seven Years War, I know, and they were like, really,

(01:02:30):
those two years count for nothing to you. Yeah, one
of these rebels, not one of the Hues, but one
of the Hues soldiers with the last Hue, Um, Hugh
McGuire's soldiers. He gets captured and he snitches out a
bunch of Grannie's family and he's basically like, yeah, no,
there are the rebels. There are the rebels, right, And
the history book I read was like kind of implying
that that was actually just completely like made up bullshit

(01:02:51):
because these people are sort of famous and you can
kind of point a finger to them and bing him
hates them, and it's a good way to get in
with someone to be like, yeah, yeah, I swear I
was Grania, but it also could have been like, we
don't know what she was doing. Is what's so interesting
about a lot of this? And so he snitches out
her son Tibbott, her son in law the Devil's Hook,
and her half brother who hadn't even mattered enough in

(01:03:12):
this story to be included until now, whose name is
Donald of the Pipes because he liked played. I know
what you're thinking. I know you're thinking everyone's phallic names.
I don't know what you are making assumptions actually even
know where you get that from this Because I'm gay, yes, yes,

(01:03:35):
well I wouldn't want to call you gay specifically, after all,
you would just in a specific time period. And so
I'm really more concerned with the acts rather than the
concerned with the pipes than anything. Yeah, exactly exactly. So
Donald of the Pipes he gets this name to this
because he's peaceful guy who plays the flute, and he's
like not been part of any of this. He's just
like sucking. Like there's a reason that she was the

(01:03:57):
one who took over the family business, and he hung
around and he played the flute. He's the hippie who's
like wearing a drug rug. Yeah totally, yeah uh, And
he gets arrested. Captured is really the word I think
when an invading force does the arresting, but probably always so.
Bingham grabs a bunch of these people, including two of

(01:04:18):
her sons, and it's just all too much for Grania.
Everything keeps happening. She's trying to keep her family alive
and together, and now her kids are in prison, and
one of her kids are dead. Of course, another one's
a traitor. She's poor. She doesn't like being poor, so
she writes Queen Elizabeth a letter. She writes a letter
and it's like, hey, sorry, I'm a pirate and a rebel.

(01:04:40):
I had to because I'm a woman. I couldn't inherent Land.
She's like playing the identity card really hard here. And
also the thing they have in common, right, it's like
you've had this problem, I think, yeah, totally. And it's
actually really interesting because they were born in the same
year and died the same year. Probably no one really
knows when she was born or died but like most
likely she died, was born and died the same year

(01:05:02):
as Queen Elizabeth. But she's like, sorry, I'm a pirate
and a rebel. I had to because I wasn't able
to inherit any land, and I had to keep up
my life with it with my husband Dad. Can you
buy any chance, like forgive me, maybe give me some
money and then also let my sons out of jail.
And the letter actually reaches the queen and this is
like she's a spy. Um. People are like, how did

(01:05:26):
it get there? What possible weird chain of how could
it have gotten there? And the Queen grants her an audience.
She's in her sixties and she captains a ship up
the Thames into London. She brings an entourage of people
with complaints about Bingham. She'll do anything to help her
family and her people, right. She'll fight, should negotiate, she'll rob,
she'll beg. She'll probably like make deals and ship you know,

(01:05:49):
possibly spy. Yeah. The legends called this the meeting of
two queens. They're almost identical ages, both coming from down
from the high points of their careers. Of course, Granny
isn't technically a queen, never held any official title, scarcely
any lands. Her power was all held together by being clever, successful,
and ruthless. And there's no recording of this meeting, which

(01:06:09):
is a shame. There's lots of myths around it, which
is fun. They probably, but most of those myths are
very like we're kind of written from the sort of
like Irish patriot point of view about like her actually
is kind of fun. There's like like one version of
the story is like she like blows her nose and
like she's like coughing, and so the queen gives her

(01:06:31):
a fancy handkerchief and she's just like blows her nose
into it and like throws it on the ground and
then like and then like how could you act that
way in front of your queen? She's like, whatever, we're equals.
Fuck you. Yeah. That definitely sounds like the sort of
story you want to be true. Not yeah. Yeah, I
am almost certain she showed up and was like, please,

(01:06:52):
for the love of God, don't murder me or my kids.
And they speak in Latin. I don't know whether she
spoke English or not. And after few months she waits
around London waiting for official response, and the Queen is like, yeah, okay,
and gives her a letter and the letter is to
give to Bingham. And she goes and she delivers a letter,
and the letter says she has to he has to
let her kids go and then also provide her with

(01:07:14):
a maintenance a salary for being alive. Basically, the ostensible
reason was because she was cut out of her husband's inheritance,
some of the like taxes from the peasants on his
land should go to her or whatever you know. Royalty
like her to retire from being a pirate by giving
her like a steady income. Yeah, totally. Bingham is pissed.

(01:07:35):
He releases her kids, but he makes her life hell.
So he quarters all of his troops in her place
and tells them to eat and drink anything they want
and just like drives her into poverty. So she foks
off to a sympathetic earl somewhere else and the rest
of her life is pretty much quiet. It seems like
this nine year war the Hughes versus Elizabeth, it seems

(01:07:58):
like she sides with the English. She specifically is to
like patrol the west coast of Ireland to keep mostly
the Spanish at Bay and it's she also encouraged her
son to fight for the English too, But there's also
reports that say her son met with you O'Neill and
was like, look, I'm actually on your side. So it's

(01:08:21):
possible they just fucking kept being double agents, like and
they hereditarily became double agents. I mean, honestly, I think
at that time like to live a double agent, triple agent.
I think that if you were a colonized subject and
you have access to some degree of power, you had
to do that dance right there was Maybe people didn't

(01:08:43):
know you were doing it, but you were probably every
single day of your life asking yourself like how do
I get through? How do my children get through? What
do I need to do? Who do I need to
funk up? And who do I need to cow tow to?
And how do I flip those when I can. I
wonder what it most like at that end of your
life to have gone through all of that and then

(01:09:03):
to just have this moment of like not peace exactly,
do you know, but to slip out of history to
be what do you how do you make sense of
your own life at that point, The compromises you've made,
the choices, the I just wish like more than a
record of their meeting. I would love like a type
document at the end of her life where she's like,

(01:09:25):
does I feel about all of this? I know, like
and it and it leads to this thing. So she's like,
she's not really written into the official histories of Ireland.
And there's a couple of reasons for that. One says,
she's not an easy story. Uh, if you're an English patriot,
she's not your guy. If you're an Irish patriot, she's

(01:09:48):
not your guy. If you're a Christian monk, she's not
a guy. H But legend picks her up as this
sort of Robin Hood or Rob Roy, the sort of
Scottish Robin Hood. Many ways, she probably wasn't. She was
probably just another would be tyrant. But I don't know,
Like she's just yeah, I wish I fucking knew and

(01:10:10):
and and I think that the answer is all of
these complex things where she was like playing both sides,
trying to keep her family alive, and I suspect I
don't know. I suspect that because she was so mad
at her son for joining the English and yet later
she told her other son to join the English which
makes me think either she's had a change her heart

(01:10:31):
because she's met Queen Elizabeth and I was like one
EIGHTI but she was in her fucking sixties, and I
feel like people don't like one eighty there beliefs as
much in their sixties. Maybe, but like, I don't know,
I mean imagine she also couldn't see the like sweep
of history that we see so easily, you know, for

(01:10:51):
all we know, she was looking at it thinking the
English monarchy is gonna collapse tomorrow. Yeah, sure, go join
them for a moment, you know, or or who the
fuck knows. I mean, that's not the difficult thing about
so much of this, particularly these folks like you were saying,
who we really know mostly through legend more than anything else. Yeah,
And she like she was alive during when Breton law,

(01:11:16):
when Irish law fell, you know, because I mean England
had been colonizing trying for hundreds of years at that point,
but overall Ireland was Ireland or Irish or Breton or
whatever the fun for a thousand years. Every everything she
could see in the past had always been that. And yeah,
like here's this like forty year period where everything is changing,

(01:11:39):
and so it would makes sense for her to just
be like, how do I navigate this ship? Yeah, and
maybe even to believe that nothing that the English did
was gonna work that thousand years of history whatever. They'll
throw themselves against this wall and they will fall apart.
And so for a moment, maybe I'm gonna pretend I'm
with them, because that's going to get me through. But
it's never gonna work out, you know. I don't know.

(01:12:00):
Maybe I'm just trying to recoup her because I also
want the legend to be true. I want fierce pirate queens,
Irish pirate queens resisting the British. Yeah, but never that
straight forward. Nope. No, That's the other thing about history.
I think if people really dig into it, the easy

(01:12:20):
lessons fall apart so fast. The easy lessons you learned
in kindergarten. George Washington couldn't tell a lie I chopped
down a cherry tree. Whatever nobody's telling you about his
teeth made from the teeth ripped out of slaves heads. Right,
The easy history is like almost always wrong. Anytime I
encounter something, it seems like a really easy pat narrative,
and you can tell who's good and who's bad and

(01:12:40):
it doesn't change over the whole course of it. I'm like,
that wasn't written by a historian. Yea, yeah, totally. Well,
well thanks for coming and being the you know, we
really played dear strengths the whole time and at things
based on New York City. And I gotta say, if
you're choosing to play like, the only other thing anything

(01:13:01):
in the whole world that I know about other than
like your New York City happens to be Irish women,
because I come from a giant clan of them. So
actually this this worked out well. It was like a
little bit of learning and a little bit of like,
oh yeah, I've been forced to listen to that story
a hundred times, but I can't remember the details. So
let's get let's get down. We were so Irish. I

(01:13:25):
grew up going to Irish festivals like every summer of
my youth. All of my cousins like did step dancing.
And I was the first one like that of my
generation and the generations about me who was not sent
to the cat Skills in the summers to work in
the Irish resorts that were there for like the poor Irish.
You know, you go and work in that way you

(01:13:46):
connect with your Irish roots and everything. My brother was
the last of them. He was five years older than me.
So I just feel like this is like a real
homecoming and I feel very welcomed by the podcast. So okay, well,
thank you excellent. Yeah. It was funny because I was like,
I I didn't I didn't know or whether or not
you're Irish. And I was like, I was like, what
the name? Probably I was like, I'll be fine either way.

(01:14:06):
It's going to be my whole name is you? Oh
to me, Peter Ryan, I am very h okay cool? Yeah,
that would have that would have worked. Yeah. Yeah, I
don't know. There's like so much I wish I really
knew how to say and one day I all know
how to say about about how Irish and identity is
like represented in American culture and like you're talking about

(01:14:27):
growing up, step dancing and stuff, and and on one level,
it's kind of like, you know, okay, well, the things
that you know, if my Irish family would talk about
all this Irish stuff but wouldn't talk about the Irish language,
wouldn't talk about Irish politics, we wouldn't talk about the
fact that like my great grand my great great uncle
whoe met who fought an Easter Rising. I went to
his hunter's birthday party and go away and did not

(01:14:50):
talk about politics. I didn't know that he fought the
Easter Rising until I was very much an adult, and like,
and so there's all of this stuff that just like,
wouldn't you know. It's like like American version of Irishness
is often just the cultural elements and not the political elements. Um,
certainly because it would be very inconvenient for us as
colonizers in North America too, really grapple with what it

(01:15:13):
means to be you know, colonized, and as migrants. I mean,
the Irish were probably the biggest European country to be
sending out refugees and asylum seekers for generations. And now
those same people are sometimes chanting close the borders and
saying like offensive ship, like my family came over the
right way, and I'm like, when your family came over,

(01:15:34):
my family came over. There were no immigration laws stopping
the Irish from cups. So no, no, it is not comparable. Yeah, totally, yeah,
And there's just so much and I wish I knew
how to, you know, and they were touching on some
of it. But one day, one day, I figure out
how to talk about all this ship and I think
it's true. I think there's something really interesting for me,

(01:15:56):
at least, I really appreciating Irish because Irish history in
the US is a history of migration, colonization, and um
a tangential or contested relationship to whiteness, and well that's
all historical, right. Irish people today they're definitely white. They
are not, you know, uh Irish and Americans not a

(01:16:19):
colonized people. And I think that having that experience threaded
through my family and the stories that I was told
made I mean, I was raised They would never have
said this, but I was raised with an anti colonial
outlook that was very strong in both my grandmother and
my parents. My mother actually ended up when I was
a kid, she went back to school to get a

(01:16:40):
PhD in education. She worked with kids who we would
today say we're autistic, but they said they had emotional
disabilities when she was doing it. And for her PhD
dissertation she ended up studying how the Catholic Church ruined
education in Ireland. So for her it was like that
education about colonization for the generation above her. They had

(01:17:01):
clung to the church right right, and she then takes
that angle and turns it on the church that rules. Yeah,
And so for me, I feel like I grew up
I didn't have words like anti colonial, and these anti
colonial struggles that I learned about weren't connected to a
broader sense of an anti colonial project. And my grandmother,
like I said, who I shared a bedroom with till
I was sixteen, she was a Republican. The politics weren't

(01:17:24):
important to her in that sense. She didn't talk about
a lot in the same way you're started talking about.
But it still meant that when I started to encounter
like post colonial and anti colonial thinkers, you know, like
when I started reading Edward Said and Friends fin On
and all of these folks who I didn't encounter until college,
it made so much sense on a certain level, and
it also complicated everything else I learned, right, because I

(01:17:45):
learned so much about how, you know, the the Irish
became white and the Irish saved civilization and all of
these really creepy answers that are not yeah yeah great.
I was just being like, man, I don't know how
to grapple it. Then you just that's thank you, that's
really useful. Well, I'm lucky. I've got a real simple
family tree. It's Ireland and than more Ireland, than more

(01:18:06):
Ireland and than Ireland. And then like one Scottish guy,
we don't talk about well, you know, because I feel
like there's this exploding brain growing level of understanding where
like the like the simple small brain one is like
Ireland and Scotland are sort of the same. They're just
Gaels or whatever, you know, and then you're like, what
are you talking about? They're incredibly different countries and blah

(01:18:27):
blah blah blah blah. And then like reading this, I'm
like the Glasgows came over for summer break to go
fight in Ireland. Half are just Scottish people. The moment
where I learned that there were like three Gaelics and
what looks like Scotts, and I say like, oh, these

(01:18:49):
countries are actually really closely connected. Yeah, Well, if anyone
wants to hear more of you talking about not this
at all. Do you have any any books out that
people could go and find. I do have, you know,
one or two folks were looking if they want to
learn about the queer history of Brooklyn when Brooklyn was queer.
If they want to learn about abolition and how it
is central to our modern queer politics, how queer black

(01:19:13):
women and trans masculine folks helped develop Greenwich Village as
we know it today, how in fact, a prison radically
transformed queer history in America. They can pick up my
new book, The Women's House of Detention, and if anyone
just wants to hear me talk about all of this,
ship and a million other things, I have a Patreon
and I just post there whatever I'm thinking about something.

(01:19:35):
Mostly it's queer history, but you never know, it might
be a picture of my cat or the book I'm
reading right now. And if you want to see people,
if you want to see anti trans people get triggered,
they can follow you on Twitter. Oh god, yeah, I
I've sort of like, um, I've stepped back a little
bit from Twitter because there are only so many like
moronic turfs that I can throw myself against on a

(01:19:59):
regular base, says And it's I feel like I take
a specific group, like I have decided that the like
the white gay men who think they know everything about
gay history because once they watched a single movie and
are now like going to tell you about like who
is and is not a woman and what how like
you know gay people, but those are the people and

(01:20:20):
like those are mine. That's my ministry. Let me let
me take them, fight with them, destroy them, and show
them how they're wrong. But the rest of the rest
of turf Island someone else has got to take care of.
But those ones, they just really stick in my cross,
so I send them my way. As a trans woman,
I specifically appreciate you doing that work among like says
gay men, So I truly feel it is my work.

(01:20:40):
It is absolutely important and like I can do it,
and they're fucking morons. And often all it takes to
like really show them how stupid well show everyone else
how stupid they are, is to let them talk to
me for like six seconds, because inevitably they say something
that is so historically stupid. Just absolutely gotto. One of
them fight with him on Twitter, and uh he was like,

(01:21:02):
I'm old enough to remember when the shown will right
new were new trend people involved, And I was like,
I'm going to give you every citation the first book,
the first article for any single thing written about Stonewall,
and you're going to see that they're trans women in
every single one of them. There you go. It took
me about three minutes. He still wouldn't back down, but
I felt like, that's my role to publicly humiliate these people.

(01:21:26):
I appreciate that, and I mostly do it from my entertainment,
but I'm glad that you appreciate it also. Well, thanks
everyone so much, Sophie. Do you have anything you want
to plug? My really good friend Jimmy Loftus has a
book called raw Dog that is a available for preorder
right now, so check out our socials and raw Dog
comes out in May. It's about hot dogs. And you

(01:21:48):
have a book that's available for preorder too, don't you, Margaret.
I do. It's called Escape from Insul Island and it
is available from Strangers and the Tangled Wilderness for pre order.
It's Tangled Wilderness dot org. And it's very short. If
you have a short attention span, it won't take you
all that long to read. It's a novella. Just a
short book. Yeah, who short books? Long podcast? Yeah exactly.

(01:22:13):
Thank you for having me on. I just want to say, like, look,
it is so exciting to get to sit down and
chat with someone who just wants to talk about history.
I fucking love this ship. It is nerdy and weird
and wonderful and also I don't know, this is just
maybe you know too much for the podcast. You want
to cut it out, go right ahead, but like, it's
really nice to reconnect and to feel like someone who

(01:22:34):
I met in my life fifteen years ago in a
totally different place, in a different moment, as we were
the cranky old people even then, and to be crankier
and older and still doing this ship like it just
it feels good. So thank you for having me on.
Thank you. I met I met you at the first

(01:22:56):
when I first finally admitted that I was queer and
I was dating my first boy was before I admitted
I was trans. I met Hugh in that context at
a conference. That's not the right of virgin virgin black
and pink bashed back back. Yeah, oh my god. Yeah,
all right, Well we will talk to you all, well,

(01:23:19):
some of us will next Monday. And thanks thanks for listening,
by y'all. By Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is
a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and
cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heard Radio app,

(01:23:39):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Host

Margaret Killjoy

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part Two: Grace O'Malley: The Pirate Queen of Ireland