Ireland's pirate queen Five centuries on, festival celebrates 'powerful, real woman'

The Atlantic foamed, the wind gusted and the pirate queen swung from the rigging. She was ruler again, at least in spirit, of this corner of west Ireland.

- Rory Carroll

Five centuries after Grace O'Malley defied convention, and the English, by leading a renegade fleet, her descendants and admirers gathered on Achill Island this weekend to celebrate her feats.

An all-female circus of performers and acrobats depicted her life – and famous encounter with Queen Elizabeth I – in an open-air show by the shoreline where she sailed.

“Grace is our anti-goddess. What makes her different from the other red-headed female figures of Irish history is that she wasn't a goddess or a fairy. She was real – a powerful, real woman,” said Dea Birkett, creative producer of the Day of Grace, which mixed circus, music and storytelling on the County Mayo island.

The theatrical premiere was the latest sign that Ireland has rediscovered a figure who was once written out of history to the point of being deemed mythical. Now her trailblazing life is the subject of tours, books, plays, documentaries and DNA investigation.

Born about 1530, Grainne Mhaol, or Granuaile, as she is also known, was the daughter of a Gaelic chieftain who led her seafaring clan through tumultuous conflicts with rival clans and encroaching English forces. She reputedly had a fleet of 20 ships and took a shipwrecked Spanish sailor as a lover between her two marriages.