Donnchadh Mór Ó Dálaigh

Donnchadh Mór Ó Dálaigh was an Irish poet and master of the Irish classical style called Dán Díreach, who died in 1244. Mor is the Irish word for "great".

Family background

Donnchadh Mór was a member of the Ó Dálaigh family of poets. Donnchadh Mór was the second of six brothers, one of whom was Muireadhach Albanach, also a poet. Authorities O'Reilly and O'Curry considered that he was Abbot of Boyle Abbey, County Roscommon, Ireland.

Reputation

The annals of Clonmacnois describe him as "Chief in Ireland for poetry". He was styled the 'Irish Ovid' due to the quality of his verse. In recording his death, in 1244, the Annals of the Four Masters describes him as "a poet who never was and never will be surpassed".

Finvarra

Donnchadh Mór settled at Finnyvara (or Finavara) in the Burren region of County Clare, Ireland. Today a hexagonal brick-built columnar monument stands outside Finavara on the coast by Pouldoody Bay as a monument to him, opposite the supposed ruined poetry school of the Ó Dálaigh's. The Ó Dálaighs occupied a rock seat nearby termed the 'Brehon's Chair' used for open air courts in ancient times and they may be buried in the mound below the monument.

O'Donovan in a note to the Annals of the Four Masters states that according to tradition preserved in the north of the County Clare he was the head of the O'Dalys of Finnyvara in the north of Burrin where they still point out the site of his house and his monument. The Ó Dálaigh's of Finnyvara were hereditary poets to the Ó Lochlainn's of Burren.

Poems

Donnchadh Mór is known to have written about 30 poems. Donnchadh Mór's poems were listed in The History of the O'Dalys by Edmund Emmet O'Daly, published in 1937 by the Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor Company of New Haven, Connecticut, USA.

Selected poems

+ + + + + + , attributed to Flann Mainistreach +

+ A Bardic Miscellany: Five Hundred Bardic poems from manuscripts in Irish and British libraries, edited by Damian McManus and Eoghan Ó Raghallaigh, Trinity Irish Studies, Dublin, 2010.