Gorgeous are the sunsets to be seen in summer over this bay; and a conspicuous object, as the sun sinks into his “watery bed” in the Atlantic, bringing a new day to our brethren beyond the seas, is the great Clare Island, which forms a sort of natural breakwater at the entrance of the bay, restraining the full sweep of the great Atlantic rollers. Deep purple look the mountains and cliffs of the island as the sun sinks lower and lower, and the bare rugged cliffs and smaller adjacent islands seem transformed as if by magic, until they almost appear to be the Laureate’s “Summer isles of Eden lying in dark purple spheres of sea.” This rugged island in the sixteenth century was the home of a very remarkable woman, who may not unfitly be called a “Princess of Thule”—one very different indeed from Mr. Black’s charming heroine, cast in a much sterner and rougher mould—but a princess, nevertheless, and one undoubtedly from “Ultima Thule.” Here lived and died the celebrated Grana Uaile, whose name in its Anglicised form we know as Grace O’Maley. She was the daughter of Breanhaun Crone O’Maille, or O’Maley, the Chief of Murrisk and of the Isles of O’Maley, of which Clare was the most important. The O’Maleys were a powerful clan, and had fought bravely in many of the local struggles. Breanhaun O’Maley died when his daughter had just grown to womanhood, leaving behind him a son, who was quite a child, and the one daughter, Grace. The laws of succession were not firmly established in those days and in that part of Ireland, and the strong-minded woman found little difficulty in setting aside the claim of the boy, and establishing herself as Chieftainess of the clan or sept of O’Maley. She soon gathered together a number of followers, who were ready to support this dauntless woman in those very unsettled days for Ireland, when the Virgin Queen sat upon the throne of England.