GRAINNE NI-MHAILLE, grittily:1 n6 mil!. or GRANAILE (Anglicized, Grace O'Malley). A noted Irish chieftainess and sea queen in the sixteenth century. She Vas the daughter of Owen O'Malley, chief of his elan and admiral of the Connacht fleet, and was born in West Galway about 1540. During the Elizabethan wars she took constant and active part against the English and their Anglo-Norman supporters, sallying out from Galway Bay at the head of her fleet to de stroy the English shipping or ravage the Norman dependencies along the coast. She was twice mar ried, and seems always to have been the dominant partner. In 1557, while cruising on the coast of Kerry, she was captured by the troops of the Earl of Desmond, by whom she was held prisoner for a year and a half, but on being released at once renewed her forays, and in 1578 defeated a strong expedition sent against her, thus making her name so dreaded that she was permitted to ride through Galway city unmolested. Some years
later, her husband dying and her two sons having already been killed, she was induced by a promise of safety to put herself in the power of the Eng lish Governor of Galway, by whom she was sen tenced to be hanged, but was ransomed by her husband's cousin. In 1591, after several other forays and encounters along the western coast, in one of which she was shipwrecked and forced to remain in hiding for some time, she led a fleet of twenty galleys against some sea rovers from the Hebrides. In 1593, and again two years later, she visited London, and is said to have made submission, but apparently to little pur pose, as in 1601 we find record of one of her ships with 100 musketeers being captured by an English sloop of war.