Her father was king of the Meathan branch of the Clan Nial, and ard-ri of Ireland for thirty-seven years.  Nial Glondubh was king of Tir-Eoghain, and heir of Flann in the high kingship, for at that era it was the custom for the kings of Meath and of Tyrone to hold the supreme power alternately.  In order to knit north and south, Flann betrothed his beautiful daughter to Cormac macCuillenan, king of Cashel, an ideal husband, one would have thought, for a poetess like Gormlai, for Cormac was the foremost scholar of the day; but his mind was so set on learning and religion that he took holy orders and became bishop-king of Cashel, repudiating his destined bride.  Gormlai was then given as wife to Cearbhail, king of Leinster, and war was waged against Cormac who was killed in the battle of Ballymoon.  Coming home wounded, Cearbhail lay on his couch, and while tended by Gormlai and her ladies told the story of the battle and boasted of having insulted the dead body of King Cormac.  Gormlai reproached him for his ignoble conduct in such terms that his anger and jealousy flamed up, and striking her with his fist he hurled her to the ground.

Gormlai rose indignant and left his house forever, returning to the palace of King Flann, and on Cearbhail’s death she at last found a true lover and worthy mate in Nial Glondubh, who brought her northward to rule over the famous palace of Aileach.  In 916 Nial became high king, but the place of honor was also the place of danger, and soon he led the mustered hosts of the north against the pagan foreigners, who held Dublin and Fingal, and he fell in battle at Rathfarnham.

A poem, preserved for us ever since, tells us that Gormlai was present at his burial and chanted a funeral ode.  Her long widowhood was a period of disconsolate mourning.  At length it is said she had a dream or vision, in which King Nial appeared to her in such life-like shape that she spread her arms to embrace him, and thus wounded her breast against the carven head-post of her couch, and of that wound she died.

Many saintly, many noble, many hospitable and learned women lightened the darkness that fell over Ireland after the coming of the Normans.

I pass to the time when a sovereign lady filled the throne of England, “the spacious days of great Elizabeth,” which were also the period of Ireland’s greatest, sternest struggle against a policy of extermination towards her nobles and suppression of her ancient faith.  Amid all the heroes and leaders of that wondrous age in Ireland, there appears, like a reincarnation of legendary Medb, a warlike queen in Connacht, Grace O’Malley, “Granuaile” of the ballads.  Instead of a chariot, she mounts to the prow of a swift-sailing galley, and sweeps over the wild Atlantic billows, from isle to isle, from coast to coast, taking tribute (or is it plunder?) from the clans.  First an O’Flaherty is her husband, then a Norman Burke.  In Clare Island they show her castle tower, with a hole in the wall, through which they say she tied a cable from her ship, ready by day or night for a summons from her seamen.  She voyaged as far as London town, and stood face to face with the ruffed and hooped Elizabeth, meeting her offer of an English title with the assertion that she was a princess in her own land.