The Ghost of Grania O'Malley by Michael Morpurgo
Love,
Jack.
Jessie sat down and replied at once, on Miss Jefferson’s word processor which she had been practising on, and which she now found a lot easier than writing by hand.
Dear Jack,
Thanks for your letter. A lot’s happened. You’ll never guess. It’s about the Big Hill. It was old Mister Barney’s idea. My dad took him (and me) along to see Marion’s dad, because he’s the only one with the money to set it up, and because Mister Barney says you can’t be blaming him for ever, that it was everyone’s fault, not just Mr Murphy’s. Anyway, we went to see him. He wasn’t too happy at first. Then Mister Barney told him his plan, and he got happier by the minute.
Mister Barney said how he’d been thinking about Coke and how horrible it was, but how everyone else in the world seemed to love it. And there was the best and purest water in the world, pouring down the Big Hill and going nowhere in particular. How about we set up a bottling plant, and sell it? We’ll call it ‘Grania’. We’ll have her picture on the label and sell it all over the world. we’ll make a whole pile of money for everyone on the island, including Mr Murphy – lots of jobs and all that – and we’ll not have to shift a single rock on the Big Hill.
Mr Murphy offered him a whisky and old Mister Barney said he’d rather have water – you live longer, he said. I can’t help thinking that Grania must have put the idea into his head. After all, she did just about everything else, didn’t she? I’ll send you over a bottle of ‘Grania’ soon as they start bottling it – probably be next spring, Dad says.
We’ve still got lots of people coming over to Clare looking for ghosts. There were some Americans here last week. They came for tea, so we gave them the last of the peanut butter. They didn’t seem to like it much. They asked me lots of questions and they had a recording machine on. Afterwards they told us they were from Los Angeles, and they made films. They said they might make a film all about the ghost of Grania O’Malley and the Big Hill, and if they did they’d film it here on the island. Dad says it’s a pipe dream. Grania O’Malley smoked a pipe, didn’t she?
Mole and Panda send you lots of love and so do Mum and Dad (and Marion of course) and so do I. And yes, I’d love to come to Long Island as long as I don’t have to get oily hands, if you know what I mean. Mum says it’s a bit expensive, so maybe I’ll come over by boat, by galley, and surprise you. We’ve got someone here who’s been before remember? So she knows the way. I’ll ask her when I next see her, shall I?
See you soon,
Love from Jessie.
PS I haven’t seen her again, but she’s been here. I was changing Barry’s water last Sunday, and I found my two earrings under the stones. I wear them all the time. Dad says I look a million dollars. And he’s right too.
POSTSCRIPT
Grania O’Malley and Clare Island
Of all the characters in this book, the only one who really lived was Grania O’Malley herself. She was a pirate queen who, for many years, held sway all along the coast of Mayo and Galway, and in Clew Bay in particular. In her long life - she lived from 1530–1603 - she had many galleys, many castles (amongst them one on Clare Island and one at Rockfleet, both still there), and she had many husbands too. The English called her Grace O’Malley, the Irish Grany O’Malley - pronounced Grania. She did have a son called Tibbott and he was imprisoned by the English. She did go to Greenwich in London to seek his release from Queen Elizabeth. So the two pirate queensmet. No one knows what passed between them, only that some months later Tibbott was released.
An Armada galleon was wrecked off Clare Island in 1588, and there was treasure on board. In April of 1994 1 went to Clare Island with my wife. We were not looking for treasure, but to see where Grania O’Malley had lived. We found a kindly people who took us in out of the driving rain, fed us and helped us with our research. Many of them were called O’Malley. We saw the ‘Big Hill’, as they call it. We went into the ruined abbey. We saw Grania O’Malley’s grave. There’s a school close by. We visited her castle. We heard there’d been gold found on the nearby island of Inishturk. We found the spirit of Grania O’Malley alive all over the island. That’s why 1 came back home and wrote this story.
None of the Clare Island people in the story are real of course, but the place is; and as for Grania O’Malley, she’s as real as you or me; as real as you want her to be.
M.M.
September 1995
Michael Morpurgo, The Ghost of Grania O'Malley