Latest / The History of Ireland: Rebellion, Empire, and Independence — Fexingo History / Brian Boru's Women: Gormlaith and the Emain Macha
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've done Clontarf, we've done the Vikings, we've done the battles. But there's a figure who stood at the very center of that world, and we haven't really talked about her yet — Gormlaith ingen Murchada. Luna: Gormlaith — she's the one who married Brian Boru, right? Lucas: She married a lot more than Brian, actually. Daughter of the king of Leinster, sister of the king of Leinster, wife of both the High King Brian Boru and his predecessor Máel Sechnaill, and mother of Sigtrygg Silkbeard, the Viking king of Dublin. You can't write the story of eleventh-century Ireland without her, and yet the annals barely give her a line. Lucas: It's a pattern that runs through Irish history. Women who are politically indispensable but historically invisible. So I thought we'd spend this episode chasing them — the queens and abbesses and lawgivers who shaped Ireland, even when the chroniclers didn't bother to write their names. Luna: I like that. A whole episode about the women behind the thrones. Lucas: Let's start with Gormlaith, because her story is a perfect knot of dynastic politics. Born around 960, she married first Olaf Cuaran, the Norse-Gael king of Dublin — that made her queen of a Viking city. Then she married Máel Sechnaill, the High King of Tara. Then after he fell from power, she married Brian Boru. And her son from that first marriage, Sigtrygg, became king of Dublin. Luna: Wait — so she was queen of Dublin, queen of Tara, and queen of Munster, all in one lifetime? Lucas: Exactly. And more than that, she was a player. In the lead-up to Clontarf in 1014, she's said to have encouraged her brother and her son to challenge Brian, to go to war against him. There's a scene in the saga Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh where she taunts them, calls them cowards for not fighting. Whether that's true or not, the image is telling — a woman who moves armies with her words. Luna: And after the battle, what happened to her? Lucas: She disappears from the record. The annals just stop mentioning her. She probably died a few years later, but we don't know how or when. That's the frustration — we have this vivid figure for a few decades, and then she's gone, like the pen just drops her. Lucas: But her kind of power wasn't unusual in early medieval Ireland. The legal texts from that period — the Brehon laws — actually gave women more rights than they had in most of Europe. A free woman could own property, inherit from her father, divorce her husband, and keep her own land after marriage. That's remarkable for the year 800. Luna: Wait, really? I thought women were basically chattel back then. Lucas: Not in Ireland. There was a law text called Cáin Adomnáin, the Law of Adomnán, issued in 697, which was literally about protecting women — clergy, and children from violence. It fined anyone who killed a woman, and it even banned women from going into battle without a man to protect them. It was the first law of its kind in Europe, and it was issued by an Irish abbot. Lucas: Now, the reality didn't always live up to the law, but the framework was there. Women could testify in court, they could make contracts, and they could exercise political power through their marriages and their kin networks. Luna: So Gormlaith wasn't an exception — she was working a system that allowed her to do that. Lucas: Exactly. And the system also allowed for something even more visible — women in religious life. From the earliest days of Christianity in Ireland, women founded and ran monasteries. St. Brigid is the most famous — she founded a double monastery at Kildare in the fifth century, and her abbess was the head of not just a religious community, but a kind of political power center. Luna: We know Brigid from her feast day and the crosses, but what did she actually do? Lucas: She was an abbess with real authority. She had bishops writing to her for advice, she negotiated with kings, and her monastery at Kildare became one of the wealthiest and most influential in Ireland. The abbess of Kildare was considered the superior of the local bishops in some records — a woman holding spiritual authority over men. Lucas: And she wasn't alone. There's St. Samthann, who was abbess of Clonbroney in the seventh century, known for her wisdom and her advice to kings. There's St. Íte, who was called the 'foster-mother of the saints of Ireland'. These women were not cloistered away — they were public figures, educators, and political advisors. Luna: That's a pretty different picture from what I had in my head. Lucas: And the Brehon law actually protected abbesses too — a woman who took vows was legally a 'woman of the church,' and she had the same rights as a bishop to sanctuary and protection. So religious life offered Irish women an avenue to power that was closed in most of the rest of Europe. Lucas: It's interesting to think about that when we hear about the veneration of Mary and the female saints — the church itself was more open to female-led communities than it would ever be again after the Norman conquest. Luna: So then why do we know so little about them? Why did Gormlaith disappear from the records? Lucas: Partly because the annals were written by monks who were focused on kings and battles. But also because the surviving sources are mostly from the later period, where the church was more patriarchal and the legal status of women had declined. By the time the Normans arrived in the twelfth century, the old Brehon laws were being replaced by feudal customs that treated women as property. Lucas: Which is why the stories we do have — from the sagas and the law texts — are even more precious. They give us a glimpse of a society where women were not just wives and mothers, but leaders, negotiators, and even warriors in their own right. Luna: Wait — warriors? Were there Irish female warriors? Lucas: Legend says yes — there's the warrior-woman Scáthach, who trained the hero Cú Chulainn in martial arts on the Isle of Skye. And in the sagas, there are women like Medb, queen of Connacht, who led armies. Historians debate how much of that is myth, but the fact that the stories exist at all tells us something about the culture. Lucas: And in the real world, there are records of women leading their kin groups' forces in skirmishes — for instance, in the sixteenth century there was Grace O'Malley, the pirate queen of the west coast, who literally commanded a fleet of ships. So the thread runs through the whole history. Luna: Grace O'Malley — I've heard of her. She met Elizabeth the First, didn't she? Lucas: She did. In 1593, when her husband and her son were taken prisoner by the English, she sailed to London and demanded to see the queen. She refused to bow and refused to be called a pirate. Elizabeth was so impressed she granted her requests. That's a woman operating in a man's world on her own terms. Lucas: It makes you wonder what other stories we've lost — the women who never got an audience with a queen, or an entry in an annal. Lucas: And speaking of supporting voices — if you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you might have noticed we don't have ads. That's because people like you, who love history and want to keep hearing these stories, decide to support us. If you're in a position to help, it's easy: you can buy me a coffee at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's just a small way to keep the episodes coming, and it means a lot to us. Luna: Yeah, I know a lot of listeners really appreciate that. It keeps things simple and independent. Lucas: Right. And speaking of independence — that's a thread that runs through all these women's stories too. Gormlaith, Brigid, Grace O'Malley — they all found ways to carve out agency within systems designed to hold them back. Lucas: But I want to bring it back to the law, because that's where the real power was. Under the Brehon law, women could be poets, physicians, even judges. There's a legal text that lists a woman's rights in marriage: she could leave her husband if he was impotent, or if he beat her, or if he was gay, or if he didn't support her. That's more progressive than many legal codes today. Luna: Wow. So if a husband beat his wife, she could just leave and take her property? Lucas: Yes. And if she left, she took her own property and even a portion of her husband's. There were eight recognized grounds for divorce, including if the husband was stingy with food. So there was a real system of accountability. Lucas: Now, we have to be careful not to romanticize it. The law was still patriarchal — a woman's family was responsible for her debts, and a husband could control his wife's property if he managed it well. But compared to the rest of Europe, where women were essentially legal minors, it's a stark difference. Luna: So what happened to all that? Why did it end? Lucas: A combination of factors. The Viking raids disrupted the monastic centers, but the real shift came with the Norman invasion in 1169. The Normans brought with them feudal law, which treated women as property to be passed between men. And the English common law that followed stripped away most of the rights women had under the Brehon system. Lucas: By the late medieval period, Irish law had been replaced by English law in most of the island, and the Brehon lawyers were outlawed. That's a loss that's not often talked about — not just a loss of legal codes, but a loss of a whole way of thinking about gender. Luna: So when we look at women's rights in Ireland today, we're looking at something that was both gained and lost over the centuries. Lucas: Exactly. And I think remembering that legacy — the queens and abbesses and lawyers who held power in a different time — gives us a richer picture of what's possible. Lucas: We'll be back with more stories from Irish history, but for now, I'll leave you with that image of Gormlaith standing at the gates of Dublin, watching her son sail off to war — a woman at the center of everything, yet invisible in the record. What we do have, we have to read between the lines. Luna: Thanks for that, Lucas. It's a side of Irish history I never really thought about. Lucas: Glad we could explore it together. And if you want to dig deeper, there's a whole world of books on medieval Irish women. But for now, that's our journey.