form of the Iron Age goddess of childbirth.
In a nearby pool, she found medieval pins, bits of fabric, leather and shoes,
fingernail clippings and hair, as well as part of a cauldron. Some of the
fabrics must have belonged to high status people–they included brightly
coloured silks and wool. The pool and another close by were lined with white
quartz, and may have been thousands of years old, suggesting that this had
been a place of magic for many generations. Further pits have also been
found, containing odd items. One was lined with the skin of a black cat, on
which were its teeth, claws and whiskers, and twentytwo eggs. In another was
a dog skin, dog teeth and a pig’s jaw. These last pits were much more recent–
the dog pit was made in the 1950s. Did witchcraft continue here?
Piracy on the high seas
Piracy was nothing new in Early Modern Britain–pirates had been raiding the
coasts and shipping since Roman times. One pirate of the era was a woman–
Gráinne O’Malley. She was born around 1530, daughter of a shipowner and
trader. After the death of her husband in the 1560s, she set up a base on Clare
Island on the west coast of Ireland and took over a castle that her husband had
taken from the Joyce clan.
Soon the city of Galway began to send complaints to the council in Dublin
that her ships were stopping traders, boarding them and demanding money or
their cargos in exchange for safe passage into Galway harbour. They were
using strongarm tactics, and even murder to extract their protection money.
Gráinne recruited mercenaries from Ireland and Scotland, and began
plundering in the Western Isles, as far south as Waterford and around northern
and western Ireland. Castles and strongholds of the clans along the coasts
were also attacked. She was a wealthy woman in her own right, having
inherited ships, lands and stock from her father, but she seems to have relished
her piratical activities.
There are many legends and stories about her exploits–how she abducted
the grandson of Lord Howth because she was refused entry to his house when
she came to pay a courtesy call, forcing the lord to promise always to keep his
gates open and to set a place at dinner for an unexpected guest. She seized
Doona Castle in revenge for the killing of her lover and followed the owners,
the MacMahon clan, when they went on a pilgrimage, killing those
responsible for her lover’s murder. She was accused of stirring up revolts in
the west of Ireland, seeing off all attempts to take her base by force. But
English power was eventually too strong and in 1593, when her sons and half
brother were captured by the English governor of Connacht, Gráinne sailed to
EARLY MODERN CRIME