Grace O'Malley, Princess and Pirate

Told by RUARI MACDONALD REDSHANK AND REBEL
. . The Same Set Forth . . in the Tongue of the English BY ROBERT MACHRAY
CASSELL and COMPANY, Limited London, Paris, New York & Melbourne 1898 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


GRACE O’MALLEY, PRINCESS AND PIRATE .
It has now become so much a matter of custom—after that familiar human fashion which causes us to turn our faces to the rising sun—to praise and laud the King, James the Sixth of Scotland and First of England and Ireland, in the beginning of whose reign over the three kingdoms—to which he has been pleased to give the name of Great Britain—this chronicle is written, that there would appear to be some danger of a wonderful truth being forgotten.
For there can be no doubt that his Highness follows upon a most remarkable age—an age which must be known throughout all time to come as the Age of Great Women.
And when I think upon Elizabeth of England, who broke the power of Spain, of Mary of Scotland, whose beauty and whose wickedness were at once the delight and the despair of her people, and of the French queens, whose talents in statecraft have never been equalled, I make bold to deny that the period of the rule of his Highness will be in any respect as glorious as that which immediately preceded his time, and in which these great women lived.
Now, whether it was from the influence and inspiration of these high and mighty exemplars, or because it was born of the pith and marrow of decreed circumstance, and so lay at the very heart of things, that women should then lead the way, and that men should give themselves up entirely to their service, I cannot say. Yet I know that there were other women of less exalted rank than those I have mentioned, whose powers, although displayed on but a small stage, were seen to be so superior to those of men that men willingly obeyed them, and lived and died for them—and living or dying were glad indeed.
And the story which I have to tell is the story of such an one.