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Women Who Took their Vengeance in an Epic Fashion

Khalid Elhassan February 28, 2021 36 min

Phoolan Devi - Bandit Queen — Phoolan Devi, when she eventually turned herself in. India Today

Clare Island - Clare — Clare Island. Galway Tourism

9. The Vengeance That Turned Grainne Ni Mhaille Into The Dark Lady of Doona

Grainne Ni Mhaille was married in her teens in 1546, and bore three children before her husband was killed in an ambush in 1565. Because of the era’s misogynistic laws, she was unable to inherit her husband’s property. So she settled on Clare Island, and made it her stronghold and base of operations. She launched a career of piracy, and started off with three galleys and a number of smaller boats. She used them with skill to prey upon shipping in nearby waters, and to raid coastal targets.

While seething over the laws that deprived her of her husband’s property, and building up her pirate fleet, Grainne consoled herself by taking as a lover a shipwrecked sailor. When her lover was killed by a rival family, the MacMahons, history got its first glimpse of Grainne Ni Mhaille’s ferocity. To exact vengeance for the death of her lover, she attacked Doona castle, where his murderers were holed up, and killed them. That earned her the nickname: “the Dark Lady of Doona“.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.