Donogh Mór O'Daly

(In Irish Donnchadh Mór O Dálaigh)

A celebrated Irish poet, d. 1244. About thirty of his poems are extant, amounting to four or five thousand lines, nearly all religious. O'Reilly styles him Abbot of Boyle (Irish Writers, p. LXXXVIII) as does O'Curry (Manners and Customs, III, p. 301); he was certainly buried in the abbey there, but it cannot be proved that he was an ecclesiastic. The religious cast of his poetry would naturally account for his having been accepted as one. According to O'Donovan (Four Masters, ad an. 1244) he was the head of the O'Dalys of Finnyvara of Burren in Clare, where the ruins of his house are still pointed out. He has often been called the Irish Ovid, for the smoothness of his verse. He was the second of six brothers, the third of whom, Muireadhach "Albanach" or "the Scotchman", was also a poet. The present writer has heard some of O'Daly's verse from the mouths of the peasantry. Only two or three of his pieces have been published, but Professor Tomás O'Máille of Galway is now preparing them for the press.

O'Reilly, Catalogue of Irish Writers (Dublin, 1820), p. LXXXVIII; Hyde, History of Irish Literature, p. 466-8; Idem, Religious Songs of Connacht, Vol. I; O'Curry, Manners and Customs of the Ancient Irish, III (Dublin), 301. For an account of his brother see The Tribes of Ireland, ed. O'Donovan (Dublin, 1852), p. 5.

Douglas Hyde.