The Pirate Lady Two days after arriving on Achill, Barbara was accustomed to the climate, heavy rain changing with sun, sometimes more or less wind. She joined a group for visiting a historical place of Ireland connected with the well-known Pirate Lady Grace O'Malley. Nobody really knows when Grace was born; it must have been around 1530, a time when the English didn't have too much influence over North-West-Ireland. Her father, chieftain of the clan Umhall Uachtarach, called Owen "Dubhdarra" (black oak) O'Malley, stood in high acknowledgment of his region. Grace got two nicknames during her youth. The first was Grainne-nag-Cearbhach, which means good at playing cards. The other one was Grainne Mhaol, which means bald head, because she cut off her hair in order to look like a boy to be able to guide her father on his ship.

At the age of 16 years, she married Donald O'Flaherty, he was the tanaist of his clan. Grace had two sons, Owen and Murrough, and one daughter, Margaret, with him. Her personal interests she invested in foreign trade. Out of her area she exported the products of her clan to Portugal and Spain, from where she got wine, herbs, glass and silk back. Her economic success made her very popular even within the men's world. At about 1560, her husband died, maybe in a battle; she got 1/3 of his properties. Now she was able to pay Scottish soldiers, so-called gallowglasses, which made her able to intervene in the clan quarrels, to robb the cattle of the neighbourhood and capture merchants on the way to Galoway. Her more than 200 soldiers were wild enough to make the captains give in, so she could avoid bloodshed in most cases. In this way she got big influence and property.

The Crew-Bay was ideal for capturing because of its ridgedom of little islands and her ships with little draught could easy withdraw through the islands into the Crew-Bay. Many tales are told of her around this region, some may be real, some not. But this one really happened, so the group of Barbara was told. Once, when one of her sons was imprisoned by the English governour Connaught, who attacked her often, she immediately sailed to England and visited Queen Elisabeth I in 1593. The tale says that Grace had been a very tall and imposing person, and the small Queen with her small stature had to look up to her even when she made her curtsey. Elisabeth I had fulfilled all her requests, so she had no longer problems. There was another event, which took place on Grace's way back from England. Grace wanted to be hosted in Howth by the family of Gaisford St Lawrence like the Queen, but she stood before closed doors. Very angry about this, she kidnapped the son of the Lord of Howth and didn't let him go before getting the promise of everyday hospitality. Therefore the gates are wide opened still today and at the table an extra chair is located for a possible guest.

All these stories were told by the leader of Barbara's group inside Rockfleet Castle, a dwelling tower, the winter residence of Grace. They saw the wooden restituted ceilings of the ground floor and the first floor. The room on the second floor had a vaulted ceiling made by stones; above that, they found the living room with an open fire-place and paved with stones. The tower even had a toilet just at one corner to the sea nearly at the height of the living room, called wardrobe, "modern with water rinsing" by the sea, twice a day. Nobody would dare to attack the tower at that side.

Walking around, Barbara learned about the extraordinarily strategical position of this tower castle, where Grace lived after her divorce from her second husband Richard an Iaraun and Tanaise of the Mac Williams, she married in 1566. And she learned again, if you meet Irish people in the North-West, they tell you more stories of Grace, you can believe or not, the very important woman of her time.