Irish Roots Weekly

Dear Reader,

This week’s pieces sit side by side rather than in sequence. They move between power and work, birth and blessing, shorelines and migration. Each reflects a moment where Irish life met change - sometimes quietly, sometimes at full force - and left a trace in land, paper, and memory.

🏴‍☠️ Gráinne Ní Mháille - Power by Sea and Shore

Grace O’Malley, known in Irish as Gráinne Ní Mháille or Gráinne Mhaol, was one of the most powerful maritime leaders in sixteenth-century Ireland. Born around 1530 into the Ó Máille dynasty of the west, she asserted leadership by land and sea after her father’s death, maintaining control despite having a brother and operating within a male-dominated Gaelic world.

English officials later claimed she controlled extensive ships, cattle, and coastal resources along the Atlantic seaboard. Her authority was not symbolic. It was economic, territorial, and enforced.

In 1593, when her sons Tibbot Bourke and Murchadh Ó Flaithbheartaigh, along with her half-brother Dónal an Phíopa, were imprisoned by Sir Richard Bingham, the English governor of Connacht, she sailed directly to England to petition Queen Elizabeth I at Greenwich Palace. Their meeting, conducted through interpreters, reflected a rare encounter between two women exercising sovereign authority in a violent age.

Gráinne Ní Mháille does not appear in the Irish annals. What we know of her life comes mainly from English State Papers, including the Articles of Interrogatory prepared for Elizabeth I. Remembered in folklore as Gráinne Mhaol and later romanticised as “the Pirate Queen”, she is best understood as a Gaelic lord who used seaborne power, negotiation, and force to defend her family and territory during the collapse of the old Irish order.

🌊🌿 Kelp Burners on the Irish Shore, 1915

Two kelp burners pause on the Irish shoreline in 1915.

From the 1600s through to the early 1900s, Ireland’s coasts supported a little-known but important industry: kelp burning. Brown seaweed was gathered from the shore, dried in the open air, then burned in stone-lined pits. The process produced a dense ash rich in soda and potash, materials essential to glassmaking, soap production, and textiles.

The work was physical and constant. Fires had to be watched. Ash had to cool before it could be broken and collected. At its peak between 1800 and 1825, kelp burning provided income in some of Ireland’s most remote coastal communities. Though eventually overtaken by cheaper imports and synthetic alternatives, it sustained families for more than two centuries and shaped daily life along the shore.

🛠️ Irish Shovel Workers, Easton, Massachusetts (1851-1855)

A rare glimpse into the lives of Irish immigrants at work in mid-nineteenth-century Massachusetts. This image has been colourised from the original black and white photograph.

These men laboured in demanding conditions, shaping tools that powered America’s growing industries. Their work helped build the town of Easton itself. The photograph records more than employment. It captures skill carried across the Atlantic, adapted to new conditions, and put to use far from home.

📜 On the Birth of a Child in Ireland (1931)

These lines were written by the Irish poet Daniel Kelleher to honour the christening of the son of Irish diplomat T.J. Kiernan, who would later serve as Ireland’s ambassador to the United States.

Ambassador Kiernan read the poem to John F. Kennedy after the birth of his son, John F. Kennedy Jr., in 1960. When John Jr. died in 1999, his uncle Ted Kennedy recited the same poem again at his eulogy.

On the Birth of a Child in Ireland

We wish to the new child,
A heart that can be beguiled,

By a flower,
That the wind lifts,
As it passes.

If the storms break for him,
May the trees shake for him,
Their blossoms down.

In the night that he is troubled,
May a friend wake for him,
So that his time be doubled.

And at the end of all loving and love
May the Man above,
Give him a crown.

Daniel Kelleher, 1931

✨ A Blessing for the Home

Peace to friends,
and peace to kin,
peace to this home
and the family within.

Like the gold of the sun
Like the light of the day
May God’s love and protection
Shine bright on your way.

Thank you for reading. These pieces remain, held quietly in history, labour, memory, and words passed carefully between generations.