A “PRINCESS OF THULE” IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
By Rev. THOMAS B. WILLSON, M.A.
Away in the far, far West of Ireland, the great Clew Bay indents the coast of the County of Mayo. At the northern entrance of this bay rise the mighty cliffs of Achill, against which the long Atlantic rollers dash themselves, in all weathers, with unceasing spray, and after a storm with terrific fury. On the south the promontory of Old Head, near Lewisburg, rises abruptly from the sea, but with less striking cliffs than on the northern side.
The bay is surrounded by hills and mountains, bare for the most part of trees, but clad in the richest purple by the heather in the summer-time. Conspicuous among the mountains is the wondrous cone-shaped Croagh Patrick, towering in an almost perpendicular mass on the southern shore, above the ruined abbey of Murrisk. From the top of it St. Patrick, according to popular legend, expelled the serpents for ever from Ireland, and it is regarded as a specially holy place by the people, who in great numbers make an annual pilgrimage to the top.
Many are the islands which dot the surface of the bay, some large, some very minute. There are said to be no less than three hundred and sixty-five of them, one for every day in the year, and if one looks upon the wondrous archipelago from a neighbouring height, they can well believe the number to be not much exaggerated. The little town of Westport is the only place of any importance on the bay, the terminus of the railway from Dublin, a spot which has seen better days, its large empty warehouses on the quay telling the sad tale of long-departed commerce.
Gorgeous are the sunsets to be seen in summer over this bay; and a conspicuous object, as the sun sinks into his “watery bed” in the Atlantic, bringing a new day to our brethren beyond the seas, is the great Clare Island, which forms a sort of natural breakwater at the entrance of the bay, restraining the full sweep of the great Atlantic rollers. Deep purple look the mountains and cliffs of the island as the sun sinks lower and lower, and the bare rugged cliffs and smaller adjacent islands seem transformed as if by magic, until they almost appear to be the Laureate’s
“Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea.”
This rugged island in the sixteenth century was the home of a very remarkable woman, who may not unfitly be called a “Princess of Thule”—one very different indeed from Mr. Black’s charming heroine, cast in a much sterner and rougher mould—but a princess, nevertheless, and one undoubtedly from “Ultima Thule.”
Here lived and died the celebrated Grana Uaile, whose name in its Anglicised form we know as Grace O’Maley. She was the daughter of Breanhaun Crone O’Maille, or O’Maley, the Chief of Murrisk and of the Isles of O’Maley, of which Clare was the most important. The O’Maleys were a powerful clan, and had fought bravely in many of the local struggles. Breanhaun O’Maley died when his daughter had just grown to womanhood, leaving behind him a son, who was quite a child, and the one daughter, Grace. The laws of succession were not firmly established in those days and in that part of Ireland, and the strong-minded woman found little difficulty in setting aside the claim of the boy, and establishing herself as Chieftainess of the clan or sept of O’Maley. She soon gathered together a number of followers, who were ready to support this dauntless woman in those very unsettled days for Ireland, when the Virgin Queen sat upon the throne of England.