Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/O'Daly, Aengus (d.1617)

1426082Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 41 — O'Daly, Aengus (d.1617)1895Norman Moore

O'DALY, AENGUS (d. 1617), Irish poet, called in Irish Aenghus Ruadh, or the ruddy, owned an estate at Ballyorroone, co. Cork, but belonged to the O'Dalys of Meath. He is often called in Irish writings Aenghus na naor, or of the satires, because he wrote, in Queen Elizabeth's reign, an abusive poem on the Irish tribes. It has been edited by John O'Daly, a Dublin publisher, born in 1800, who was eighteenth in descent from Dálach, the ancestor from whom the O'Dalys are named, with notes by J. O'Donovan. The poem contains some information of interest about localities at its period. The poet says he will not abuse the ‘Clann Dalaigh,’ or Daly family—a term by which he means not his own poetical race, but the O'Donnells of Donegal, who were called Clann Dalaigh, from an ancestor of theirs named Dálach, and who were not kin to the O'Dalys. Many copies of the poem are extant. He also wrote ‘Tainic lén do leath Mogha’ (‘Misfortune has come to the southern half of Ireland’), a poem of 168 verses on the death of Donnchadh fionn MacCarthy. O'Daly was stabbed by a man named O'Meagher near Roscrea, co. Tipperary, on 16 Dec. 1617.

[O'Daly's Tribes of Ireland, ed. O'Donovan, Dublin, 1852; Transactions of the Iberno-Celtic Society, Dublin, 1820.]

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