You're Dead to Me - Grainne O’Malley (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: January 21, 2023

Greg Jenner is joined by historian Dr Gillian Kenny and comedian Catherine Bohart in 16th-century Ireland to look at the life of pirate queen Grainne O’Malley. Against the backdrop of the changing l...egal landscape of Ireland as it faced brutality from incoming English administrators, we look at the difficult decisions Grainne was forced to make to ensure her family's survival. From bold changes to her appearance as a teenager to ensure her place on her father's ship, to aggressive actions against a castle that refused to serve her food. Grainne O’Malley was not a woman to be messed with. This strength and defiance would lead to an unlikely understanding with Queen Elizabeth I.For the full-length version of this episode, please look further back in the feed.Produced by Cornelius Mendez Script by Greg Jenner and Emma Nagouse Research by Jessica WhiteA production by The Athletic for BBC Radio 4.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon pull-apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, a comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I am a public historian, author and broadcaster. And in this show, we mash together historical high flyers and class clowns until your brain is positively abuzz with book learning. And today we are tackling piracy.
Starting point is 00:00:37 The difference? No salty sea dogs or bottles of rum. No, we're off to 16th century Ireland to run amok with the infamous pirate queen, Gráinne O'Malley. And to help me untangle fact from fiction, I'm joined by two very special guests. In History Corner, she's Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin, where she researches the lives of women and outsiders in late medieval Europe. She's starting work on the first ever scholarly biography of Gráinne, and her Twitter bio describes her as a raging medievalist. Is there any other kind? I'm sure she's lovely. It's Dr Gillian Kenny. Welcome, Gillian. scholarly biography of Gráinne and her Twitter bio describes her as a raging medievalist. Is there any other kind? I'm sure she's lovely. It's Dr Gillian Kenny. Welcome, Gillian.
Starting point is 00:01:09 Hello, Greg. All good here, thank you. Raging. And in Comedy Corner, she's an award-winning comedian, classically trained actor and writer. You'll have seen her on The Mash Report, 8 Out of 10 Cats, Mock the Week. You'll have heard her on the BBC Sounds podcast, You'll Do. A big welcome back to the wonderful Catherine Bohart. Hi, Catherine, how are you? Hello. I'm very excited to be here. I can say Asguelga, August Gráinne, so at least I'm ahead of you on that. But I can't imagine that I'm going to do anything other than cover myself in national shame.
Starting point is 00:01:37 So I'm excited. So, what do you know? This is where I have a crack at guessing what you at home might know about today's subject. If you're one of our lovely Irish listeners, you will know, of course, about Gráinne O'Malley, or at least you'll know the name, or rather you'll know her Irish name, which I'm not going to try and pronounce because I tried it before and Gillian laughed at me. OK, and if you're English or American, chances are you call her Grace O'Malley. And yet, there is no movie or TV show about Gráinne. There have been a few things. There've
Starting point is 00:02:11 been some plays written about her. There have been folk songs sung about her. There was a 2007 Broadway musical called The Pirate Queen. And yes, last year, there was a graphic novel, Pirate Queen, Legend of Gráinne O'Malley. But what else might we know about this rebel gal? Well, you may know that she was a marauding, misbehaving and mischievous pirate along the west coast of Ireland and she was best gal pals with Elizabeth I of England, but is that true? What do we really know about Gráinne O'Malley and does she live up to her infamous reputation as a genuine pirate queen? Let's find out.
Starting point is 00:02:44 Okay, first of all, Dr. Gillian, this is a story that mostly unfolds in the 16th century in Ireland, about 500 years ago. But actually, I'm going to throw to Catherine here because she's an expert ready to take on Gillian. So, Catherine, what was the political context of Ireland in the 16th century? Oh, you were the bad guys. I mean, we're finished. See, I got the historian's approval yeah you were the baddies we were the goodies and uh it remains ever such well i mean it's it's roughly accurate all right jillian would you like to finesse that slightly with a bit more political
Starting point is 00:03:17 context so you basically by about 1500 you have to imagine a country that's culturally split going back a little bit further when the ang-Normans invaded in the 12th century, their invasion and colonization didn't take over the whole country and it kind of ground to a halt. And then you have areas of English influence, as it's called. So that would be Dublin and the counties around it, like a hinterland, the major cities and three large lordships around the country. So it's basically centred on the east and southern areas of Ireland, the west and north. It's a much more Gaelic experience. And at this time, around 1500, they call themselves things like Old English, descendants of the Anglo-Normans.
Starting point is 00:04:00 And then you have the Irish or the Gaelic Irish. And then as the 16th century progresses, as the Tudors come into play and turn their attention to Ireland, you start to get what are called the New English coming in who are Protestant settlers. That doesn't tell the full story because it is a cultural mishmash. The great English lords in Ireland, loads of them spoke Irish. Some of them didn't speak English. They married Irish women. Sometimes they followed Irish laws. And it's run basically by some of the bigger old English families having a free hand with it. Grainne is growing up in the west of the country. So she is the Irish Irish. We think she's born, what, roughly 1530? Yeah. Who's her dad? What's the situation? Is she, you know,
Starting point is 00:04:41 born with a cutlass in hand? How can we only ask who her dad was? Oh, straight in. I want to know all the stuff. So dad and mum and siblings. But I'm assuming it's a patriarchal society. Does dad matter more than mum? Irish society provides a lot of power for women, particularly married women. But it's, you know, it is patriarchal in the sense that it is a warrior society.
Starting point is 00:05:01 It is controlled by men. So, yeah, her dad is Owen O'Malley. Her mother was also an O'Malley. And the O'Malleys are, they're unusual because they're seafarers. So they also, they run their own little kingdom. It's not a particularly powerful family, but they are unusual because of course
Starting point is 00:05:17 they have fleet of war galleys and they go around imposing taxes on ships that pass by them them which is basically piracy so when they said like we're here to collect taxes on threat of what like did they kill people yeah yeah they just kill you right so when you said kind of pirates you meant like proper yeah yeah yeah and when she's pretty young one of the nicknames i mean grony gets got a lot of nicknames one of the nicknames is a gronya the bald cne gets got a lot of nicknames. One of the nicknames is Gráinne the Bald. Catherine, do you want to have a guess at how that's happened?
Starting point is 00:05:49 Do they cut her hair so that she could be on the ship and look like a boy? Gillian? The story is she wanted to go to sea with her dad. And he was like, no, because you've got such long hair, Gráinne, and it'll catch in the rigging or whatever, you know. Oh, for the love of... And she went, well, fair enough, I'll lose my hair then, and shaved it all off. That's such a teenage move.
Starting point is 00:06:08 That's like, oh, I can't go somewhere if I have too long. Oh, well, you'll see. And then at 16, we think she marries the O'Flaherty's, so they're sort of a neighbouring chieftain, and she marries Donal, who is... Well, let's say he's underwhelming as a husband, shall we? I mean, Gillian, in your notes, you've called him a loser. That's my considered scholarly opinion.
Starting point is 00:06:31 Basically, he was a hothead and was just useless as a ruler. So she seems to have stepped into the breach. His men tended to follow her. But this is probably when she starts to make a bit of a name for herself, raiding up and down the coast. Here's the thing that you need to know, Greg, and you won't know this
Starting point is 00:06:49 intuitively as an English person. There isn't a good Donal. No, that's right! I've never met a Donal I liked. But truly, Donals are trash. This is great. Yeah. Anyway, moving on.
Starting point is 00:07:03 Gornia's marriage is a marriage of equals. She bought ships and stuff and Donal brought stuff She's a young woman, she's married, she's got kids And yet she's also now a pirate She's up and down the west coast And then Donal dies He's murdered by a rival clan, the Joices
Starting point is 00:07:17 The Joices then attack the castle that Gráinne is in And she leaps to the defences, doesn't she? Yeah, so the castle was called Cox Castle. Then she defended it so well that they renamed it Hens Castle for her. But again, what's fact, what's fiction? We don't know. Gráinne is an absolute baller on the battlefield and at sea, but her rights get screwed over pretty quickly. As a widow, when Donal dies, she has the rights of a child.
Starting point is 00:07:46 She then has to say goodbye to her kids. They're taken off her. And what happens to her stuff, to her life? Yeah, under the Gaelic-Irish system, so you have enormous freedom of action as a woman. You have massive legal rights. You can also administer the goods you bring with you to a marriage, which gives them an enormous amount of power.
Starting point is 00:08:04 When you're a widow, though, it reverts and you have to go back under the ownership of your nearest male relative. Now, we're not entirely sure what happened with Gráinne because the thing about her is that she never appears to have done anything she's supposed to do anyway. She's described in the 1590s as being the nurse of all rebellions for the last 40 years.
Starting point is 00:08:23 So she must have started in, you know, around that time, 1550s, 1560s. So it looks like she was active. And for the next while after the death of Donal the Useless, she appears to have struck out herself. She does keep some of the ships. She does keep some of Donal's men. They kind of go, well, he's dead and he was a bit of a douche anyway, so we're going to come with you.
Starting point is 00:08:42 Which means she gets to carry on being a pirate queen. And she also now gets to be young and flirty because she's picking up various gentleman lovers, by the sounds of it. She probably has more children with other men. And then her dad dies. Now, Catherine, last time out as a widow, she lost a lot of her rights, a lot of her land.
Starting point is 00:09:00 What do you think happens when her dad dies? I'm going to assume her rights revert to under somebody else. I haven't heard tell of an uncle, so I hope she doesn't have to be taken care of by a son. Gillian? What should have happened is that she would be under the overlordship of another male relative, but there doesn't appear to have been one to keep her in check.
Starting point is 00:09:17 So she just appears to have kept going and carving out this sphere of influence for herself. Is it fair to say she becomes a chieftain? There is no indication that she became the O'Malley. It may well have been that just no one wanted to cross her. She's basically an Irish mammy. Yes. I mean, both the fear of crossing her,
Starting point is 00:09:39 that actually made me feel more physically scared than thinking that she murdered people on a boat. So I was like, oh my God, don't cross her. She's never hit the end of it. Wouldn't be worth it. My God. Yeah, it's that. So one of my favourite stories about her, and we don't know if this is true or not, it goes down at Hoth Castle. Catherine, if you were to go to your favourite restaurant and they haven't got a table for you, how are you going to react?
Starting point is 00:09:57 Trip advisor would hear about it. I wouldn't say anything in person, obviously. I'm not a maniac, but they'd get a bad review, sure. But you probably wouldn't kidnap the family member of the restaurant manager did she do that oh my god I love her so much she's in tip that's so great yeah so story is is that she took off and spotted the young heir to everything playing on the beach picked him up put him in her boat and sailed back to the west of Ireland with him and then she extracted a promise from them that they would always lay an extra space at a table.
Starting point is 00:10:29 From now on, they were still doing that whole castle, as far as I know, until recently. That is hangry at a new level, isn't it? Whoa. We've got Gornia now aged roughly 30. And what happens at this point in her life is really important because we now get the arrival of Elizabeth I on the throne of England. And she takes after her dad in being very much not chill when it comes to Ireland.
Starting point is 00:10:52 She is sending in administrators and these guys do not play nicely. And they've got some pretty sneaky tactics. It's not just violence. It's also, is it something called surrender and regrant? Gillian, can you explain what that is? So Henry VIII brings in a system called surrender and regrant? Gillian, can you explain what that is? So Henry VIII brings in a system called surrender and regrant. The aim is to civilise Ireland, to finish the conquest started by the Anglo-Normans. It's to impose English civilisation and culture on the island. And basically, at this time when it's carried out in the 1530s and 40s, they have a very, very capable English administrator in Ireland who's carrying it out called St. Ledger.
Starting point is 00:11:25 And he's very good at doing it. And he gets quite a few Irish to come over, Irish Gaelic lords, and they will be sort of regranted their lands. They hold under primogeniture, which is the English common law system. And they say bye bye to the Irish legal system. So they basically become English lords. But then it peters out really. It doesn't work under Edward so well, under Mary. By the time it gets to Elizabeth, the thinking has changed. The Irish have lost trust in the system because unfortunately, some of the later administrators saw Ireland as something to be exploited. You get plantations started in the 1550s in Ireland and the Irish rulers begin to see actually, they're just going to
Starting point is 00:12:06 take the lands from us and divide them out and rebellions break out constantly. Yeah the most famous one probably is the first Desmond rebellion when the Earl of Desmond is locked up in the Tower of London and his men kick off. He's called Gerald Fitzgerald. Catherine do you want to guess what his supporters are called? Geraldites? Oh, nearly the Geraldines. Of course they are! Of course they're the Geraldines! I mean, the Geraldines kick off and that's the first Desmond Rebellion. There are several rebellions. And one of the sort of really nasty people at the time is Walter Raleigh's brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert. He's one of these administrators who, he's really cruel.
Starting point is 00:12:41 He's killing men, women and children, isn't he? He liked to do two things. He liked to particularly terrorise older women. He also liked to cut off the heads of everyone he killed and lay them down as a kind of hallway outside his tent. The amount of child casualties in these wars is astonishing. And he used to lay them down as a kind of a pathway and then make their relatives come in and parley with him so they'd have to look at the heads of their dead relatives. There's an increasing othering of the Irish in thinking they are seen as barbarian. So it's easy to kill.
Starting point is 00:13:13 So that's what begins to happen. The tone changes and it becomes very, very vicious. I mean, clearly Elizabeth knew about this. To what degree would you say that murder of children and older women and brutalising the population was the policy or overlooked part willfully? It's overlooked. This is happening at the provincial level, but the higher-ups, there are people in charge in Dublin who are trying to stop it.
Starting point is 00:13:40 Let's talk about Gráinne again, because she is now entering a new phase of life. She gets married again in 1567 to Richard Burke. He's talk about Gronja again, because she is now entering a new phase of life. She gets married again in 1567 to Richard Burke. He's quite a big deal. And Catherine, do you want to guess why this marriage might have been a bit awkward around the dinner table at Christmas? I feel like I can never predict what she's going to... Why? Tell me why. Donal had killed Richard's brother or stepbrother.
Starting point is 00:14:03 That is so Donal. Okay. Yeah, it is so Donal. Case closed. brother or stepbrother. That is so Donal. Okay. Yeah, it is so Donal. Case closed. And they have another kid. The child is called Theobald. The story goes that Gráinne gives birth and then the next day Algerian pirates turn up
Starting point is 00:14:16 and attack her fleet. She reacts in typical Gráinne fashion. She runs out with a blunderbuss and shoots at them. These are stories which are romanticised, aren't they? But they say a lot about how people thought of her. Well, all I can say is no stitches, obviously. That's all I'm going to say on that. Do you think that they purposely chose the day after she gave birth?
Starting point is 00:14:35 She's tied up and then she's screaming at them, go and take this from her unconsecrated hands. That's what she's screaming at them apparently, because she hasn't been charged. Anyway, apparently she got rid of them. So the kid is Theobald, but they call him in Irish, Tibbet Nalung, which is Theobald of the ship, because he was apparently born on this ship.
Starting point is 00:14:53 I mean, the problem with Richard is that he's pretty powerful, but the English then come along with their sneaky surrender and regrant lord. And what that means is that Richard gets disinherited from the powerful MacWilliam Burke lands that he's meant to inherit next. The English basically strip that away from him. So he has been kind of cheated by the English. Is that what we're calling a kind of cheated? Well, okay.
Starting point is 00:15:17 Daylight robbery occurred. Catch them. Yeah, and you may go on. So Gráiny has two choices. She can either negotiate with the English and play the same game, or she can launch a rebellion. 1577, what do you think she does? I'm going to guess she goes for the rebellion.
Starting point is 00:15:34 She doesn't. Really? No, she talks to the English representative, Henry Sidney, and she even offers him ships and her men. He comes and visits her. Was he hot? Was he young? No. Not especially, I don't think. So talks to henry sydney who's who who's an english administrator he's you know he's not quite as barbaric and monstrous as the other chaps and what's interesting about this is that the other
Starting point is 00:15:57 irish then think hang on a minute is gronya on team england so she is then arrested, imprisoned by the Earl of Desmond and his lovely Geraldines. At this level of society with the aristocracy, what they want to do, Irish and English, is to hold on to what they have for their families. And if that means that she has to come to terms with an English Lord Deputy, then she will. Or she's a traitor and the Geraldines were right.
Starting point is 00:16:23 Well, you know, she was raiding down and got captured by the Earl. So she's up traitor and the geraldians were right well but you know she was raiding down and got captured um by the earl so she's she's up to her old tricks you know she's not being great and then he captures her to impress to impress the the english administration in dublin and she gets shipped off there to keep her quiet for a wee bit after two years in prison remarkably she comes out of it and ends up as a lady. She ends up as Lady Burke. Richard becomes an Earl. They've done a deal with the English. They let her go because the Second Desmond Rebellion is breaking out because it looks like her husband, Richard Burke, is probably going to join in with it at this stage. He kicks off to stretch English power and then she doesn't join
Starting point is 00:17:02 in with it, interestingly. She keeps out of it and then eventually she joins in when it looks like his claim to the Macquillian Burke, which is the overlordship, it's given to someone else and then she joins him and they come together and then they pose such a threat together to the English, basically. They come to terms with the English and then she's Lady Burke. But then Richard promptly dies. So she doesn't get to be Lady Burke for long, does she?
Starting point is 00:17:24 I mean, she keeps the title, but he goes in 1583. She carries on plundering and pillaging and pirating and asking people for voluntary donations. And she's mixing and matching Irish law as well, isn't she? Now that she's part of the English system and the Irish system, she's very cunning in just sort of going, well, today I'll be Irish, tomorrow I'll be English. She's very clever. Under the Irish system, you're entitled to take your goods back with you
Starting point is 00:17:48 when he's dead so she you know she would have brought any any vessels she brought with her any any cattle they're the currency in ireland and then she also said oh i'm an english lady now right i'll have a castle thanks and basically just took a castle. How? What law was that? So in the English system, you're entitled to your dower, which is a third of your dead husband's lands. And sometimes he used to have what's called a jointure, which is a joint settlement of lands. So she just went, brilliant.
Starting point is 00:18:17 So I'm English now, am I? Thanks, I'll have that castle. She's lost her husband, but she gets a new man in her life, but not in a romantic way, in Sir Richard Bingham, who is one of these English administrators who is just the worst. They sort of become each other's grand nemesis, really. He's a soldier. He's got a sort of real chip on his shoulder.
Starting point is 00:18:36 And she ends up at war with him, essentially. He is brutal. He rounds up some of her family members and executes them for petty crimes. He burns her land. You know, he really goes for her, doesn't he? So Bingham is a very experienced soldier and also probably a psychopath. He was involved with the Second Desmond Rebellion, broke out in 1579, which Gráinne's husband supported in the West.
Starting point is 00:19:01 That was astonishing, the Second Desmond Rebellion, in terms of the genocidal activity. So Bingham, his famous quote is, the Irish can't be tamed with words, only with swords. So there's all these stories about him. There's one day, and he sat at the Assizes, which is the court, and he hung 70 people in a session, which is like a mechanization of murder. So there's one raid he carried out, and he said he killed 100 men, women and children. Bingham becomes obsessed with her. Bingham hates her and he focuses all his power on her. So Bingham is told by the crown to, what they wanted to do is to impose what's called
Starting point is 00:19:38 a cess on the Irish, which is a tax. They wanted the Irish to pay this and then to stop all the exactions which they customarily carried out within their own kingdom. So it's again, this idea of centralising, of making it much more like England. The Irish went, no thanks, because not only did he do that, he was getting very involved in internal politics. And he was trying to decide who was going to inherit which kingdom. And he got involved in the Macquillian Burks again, and they massively kicked off. It just set off years of rebellions. If you goad them into rebellion, you can eventually take their land.
Starting point is 00:20:14 So it serves as a very useful tool. Bingham captures at least one of her sons, is involved in the death of another son, Owen, who is stabbed 12 times by Bingham. And he also captures Gráinne and builds a gallows and points at it and goes, I could hang you at any point if I wish to, which is just his sort of cruel flirtation technique. I was going to say, do you think all of her friends
Starting point is 00:20:34 sit around in her castle being like, I bet she really fancies you though. That's why he's so obsessed. Do you know what I mean? I wouldn't worry about a Gráinne. He's negging her. Yeah. So Gráinne turns to an unlikely ally in that she pops off to England to go and meet the Queen,
Starting point is 00:20:48 which is where our children's stories of Gráinne being best pals with Queen Elizabeth. This is where this comes from. Yeah, basically. Her son has risen up in rebellion, has been arrested by Bingham Theobald, Tibbet Nalong, the one who was born in the ship. She's properly afraid he's going to hang Tibbet Nalung, the one who was born in the ship. She's properly afraid he's going to hang Tibbet. She's boxed in increasingly after Bingham arrived, 1580s and 90s. You see a lot more English naval vessels along the coast of Ireland, which puts paid to a voluntary donation scheme.
Starting point is 00:21:16 So she's increasingly desperate. It's an interesting conundrum for her. There is no help for her on the Gaelic side. We often think of this in a binary way, but she's willing to find help where she can get it. And she takes off for, she writes a letter to London and then she takes off to London to go and visit the Queen. We don't know if she did actually get to see her. At that stage, Elizabeth didn't always meet with visitors. What's interesting for her is she's the spokesperson
Starting point is 00:21:44 for all of them rising up in rebellion, the members of her family, the Burks, the O'Malleys, the Flaherty's. And it's fascinating. She talks about her life, how she's basically a poor farmer. And who would have thought? She's like, I'm sorry, piracy, I don't understand. I'm sorry, what rebellion? She just used sexism against them.
Starting point is 00:22:04 Yeah, she's like, I'm sorry, what is this rebellion you speak of, Mr. Man? She played dumb, like all the best women have had to do in their lives. That's amazing. She's like, basically, Liz, I'm now English, more or less. So I'd like my sons to support me like an English common law, like the whole dower thing. I'd like that from their lands as well. Elizabeth says, yeah, crack on.
Starting point is 00:22:28 You can do it. And yeah, so she was at court and, you know, it was supposed to be extraordinary because they were speaking Irish and her crew and her gang and they would have dressed very differently. They, you know, they didn't look, they didn't dress like the Elizabethans did.
Starting point is 00:22:43 So the story goes that she met Elizabeth and the only language they could converse in was Latin my favorite line is that it says that Queen Elizabeth says Gráinne has at times lived out of order as if she sort of had a minor scuffle this is a pirate queen who was raided up and down the coast for 40 years so she's gone and she's got what she wanted and she goes back home and of course Bingham being Bingham completely ignores all of this. So she has to go back to the court for the second time, we think. And this time Elizabeth takes it seriously and Bingham gets his comeuppance. Is that right?
Starting point is 00:23:14 Yeah, he completely ignored the instructions that were sent to him. I mean, he lost his mind with anger. He was writing to them in England going, she's basically the root of all rebellions and I can't do a thing about her. Of course they sent her back and they didn't get any sureties for her behaviour. So she's all like, well I'm going to be fine now. And then goes home and launches straight back into it again.
Starting point is 00:23:36 And Bingham's like, what did I say? I told you this. He stations men on her land and she feels very hemmed in so she complains again and he gets yanked back not only did she join the english she was a little snitch yeah well she's snitching you know she she she uses the tools of the oppressor against them catherine i think that's how we have to uh to frame this i think the truth with grania though is that we have here someone who's politically
Starting point is 00:24:01 extremely savvy and who has played the system and then by 1603 we think is when she might die yeah the last time we see her in a record is 1601 but she seems to have disappeared at some stage in the first decade of the 17th century and i think we often imbue these people with with later ideas about nationalism and about what it meant to be irish and it doesn't really enter into it what it meant to her was the primary driver for her and her son were the family lands and your primary drivers to hand them on. And they were really successful in doing that. So they become a really entrenched part of this new Ireland that's emerging. And they suffered for it. They had horrendous times. Everyone did. But they were one of the few families who managed to cling on into the 17th century,
Starting point is 00:24:48 which is testament to their political skill, Theobald and his mother, which she obviously tutored him in. Catherine, how are you feeling about Ronya now? We know her as a pirate queen. Do you think that sums her up or do you think we need to change the framing? I think it does,
Starting point is 00:25:02 but she sounds like quite a politically savvy person, both militarily and politically quite strategically effective. So it seems like she, it almost seems to do her a disservice. It feels like piracy was her passion, but strategy was her skill. The Nuance Window! That brings me to my favourite part of the episode, The Nuance Window! that Gráinne O'Malley was a very exceptional woman and there's been nothing like her before in Irish history. And in many ways, she is exceptional, as we've discussed. But also she represents probably the end or one of the ends of a long line of very powerful,
Starting point is 00:25:53 very influential women in Gaelic Ireland. Irish women, particularly Irish wives, wielded a large amount of political power. So they could lead their own troops, which they often did in contravention of their husband's wishes. They could sit on war councils, they often advised, and they often acted as negotiators. And those are things that happened for hundreds of years before the Tudors came to Ireland. And what comes out really strongly in the Elizabethan period, which you don't so much
Starting point is 00:26:22 see beforehand, is a real misogyny as well. So the Elizabethans, they had a real hatred of what they called disorderly women. And they saw women like Gráinne as being sluttish, vain and idle. That's how Irish women were described at the time. The English chroniclers who were there said they exercised an inordinate amount of influence over their families. And that influence was always in the interest of disorder. They spread stories like women would pee in front of their husbands and get outrageously drunk, some of which may be true, but anyway. So the thing about Gráinne is that she's the ultimate expression of it
Starting point is 00:26:57 because she not only does this, but she also lives as a chieftain, which it doesn't look like anyone ever did. But she did it at a time when there's this intersection of what you could call racism, because they saw the Irish as a lesser race, and absolute misogyny, and it's fuelled by religious hatred. This sort of sees the end of these women. She's one of the last. So the very sad thing about her is, of course, is that the world that she knew is dying. And she probably lives to see the end of it. But she's such a pragmatist that she chooses a way out and the way out she chooses is the way of concord with the English.
Starting point is 00:27:34 There's a lesson there for all of us through the ages, I think. Choose your enemies well. Well, I'm afraid that's all we have time for today. I hope you've both enjoyed getting to grips with Gráinne, I have. And a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner, the marvellous Dr Gillian Kenny from Trinity College, Dublin, and in Comedy Corner, the magnificent Catherine Bohart. And to you, lovely listener, join me next time
Starting point is 00:27:56 as we raid another historical era with a completely different crew. Anyway, I'm off to see if I can have a place set for me at Pizza Express Woking for the rest of the century. Bye! Is Batman actually a baddie? Wayne Enterprises have a huge carbon footprint. What's really going on with Marvin Gaye? The moment you play it, everyone's raising eyebrows.
Starting point is 00:28:21 Was Cleopatra a snake or a saviour? She's manipulated. Roman leaders. Maybe she had a great personality. I'm Russell Cain and this is Evil Genius. It's where I join a panel of comedians to reveal surprising things about historical icons. Not even the hobbits are safe. I'm on board.
Starting point is 00:28:38 Have you dated any? Evil Genius with me, Russell Cain. Listen on BBC Sounds. Apply.

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