Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 28, 1917.djvu/476

 442 Collectanea.

Kirka"; thither she carried off the son of the Earl of Howth, because the earl kept his castle gate shut on her. Her hus- band, an O' Flaherty, was called " the Cock," she encouraged him in his wars with the Joyces and was known as " the Hen " ; the Joyces hemmed them in (the castle being in a lake), made a causeway, stormed the tower and killed all its inmates save Grania, who escaped. On her husband's death she married MacWilliam Eighter (as Richard an larainn Burke was called), " tor a year certain " and then either could dismiss the other. When she had got her partizans into all his castles she went to her own tower at Carrigahowley. Sir Richard came to see her and she looked out of the window and cried " I dismiss you," so her second marriage ended. ^ She sided with " Bingham " against the Burkes and helped the Enghsh. Iri gratitude. Queen Elizabeth asked her to court, where she behaved as a sister queen. She refused to be made a countess, but accepted an earldom for her little " English-blooded son, Toby of the ship^." Some said it was on her return that she visited Howth Castle. Her favourite residence was on Clare Island, where she kept her fleetest galleys with their cables tied to her bed post. In 1808 MacParlan tells the same of her at Rockfleet, " Grace of the heroes kept the cable of her favourite barge fastened to her bed post there." She was a great friend of the Enghsh and fought against her husband.

On Clare Island ^ in 1910 I found (as Dr. Charles Browne did in 1897 2) many stories about her. She is said to have made an unrecorded marriage with a young man whom she had saved from a wreck and who fell madly in love with his preserver. They were married at the Station, holy well of Toberfelabnd, by its priest, and lived very happily for some years. At last

' The same is told of Maura Rhue (O'Brien) of Lemaneagh, Co. Clare (sit/ra, vol. xxiv. p. 494). Grania says in her petition that husbands sometimes divorced their wives without legal process in Connacht (Ca/. State Papers, Inland, 1593, No. 62).

^ Ord. Survey Letters, Mayo, vol. i. pp. I -9, and vol. ii. pp. 249-264; Clare hid. Szirz'ey, p. 40.

3 " Ethnography of Clare Island and Inishturk " (Dr. Charles R. Browne), Proc. R.I. A. ser. iii. vol. v. p. 67, etc.