St. Patrick’s Day is about all things Irish, except pirates. By overlooking pirates an important part of St. Patrick’s story is over looked. It was Irish pirates that kidnapped St. Patrick and brought him over to Ireland. There is a theory that was the high king Niall of the Nine Hostages himself who transported the young saint to be to his destiny.
Ignoring pirates also ignores an important part of Ireland’s maritime heritage. This “nursery and storehouse of pirates” gave the world Grace O’Malley and Walter Kennedy who sailed with Black Bart. Anne Bonny was born in Kinsale, Co Cork. Her father fled Co Cork because of the scandalous nature of Anne’s birth. Anne was the offspring of an extra material affair between her father and a maid. Then there are the lesser known pirates such as Captain Theobald Magee who the town of Portmagee in County Kerry is named after. He focused on pirating routes between France, Portugal and Ireland. Then there’s Luke Ryan who smuggled goods between Ireland and France.
Baltimore, Co Cork was a pirate haven that enjoyed a thriving economy. Merchants would buy goods from pirates at cheap prices and sell them at a profit in town. Most of this was done after dark. Pirates would leave their plunder on shore at a predetermined spot and the merchants would come and collect it. Just east of Baltimore, near the town of Castletownsend there are steps and light niches carved into the rock of Dutchman’s Cove to facilitate trading with pirates, and the appropriately named Crookhaven Harbor has a that staircase leads to a subterranean cavern with a waterway that boats could enter.
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Ireland might also have given us the word buccaneer. Forget that the word comes from the French meaning boucan. Daniel Cassidy, author of How the Irish Invented Slang: The Secret Language of the Crossroads wrote in a Slanguage column for The Irish Echo that the word’s origin comes from two Gaelic words boc aniar (pronounced buc iniar) meaning “a dashing rouge from the west”. After the Flight of Earls in 1607 thousands of Irish soldiers and landless aristocrats fled to Spain and France. Many became pirates and made their way to the New World. They were rogues from the west or boc aniars which became anglicized to buccaneer. A far more accurate description of pirates then calling them after a bbq.
As Erin’s children celebrate their heritage let them embrace the freedom and rebellious nature of their national character as found in their piratical history. Pirates Forever!
