Ó Dálaigh, Aonghus (Aengus O'Daly) (d. 1617), bardic poet, was of the family of Ó Dálaigh Cairbreach (O'Daly of Carbery) a branch of the O'Dalys of Desmond and hereditary poets to the O'Mahony chieftains. Known as Aonghus na n-Aor (Aenghus of the satires), or as an Bard Ruadh (the Red poet), he was descended, as were the other O'Dalys of Desmond, from Raghnall Ó Dálaigh who died in 1161. Their territory was the Muntervary peninsula in west Cork, where the family had a poetic school at Drumnea in the parish of Kilcrohane. Ó Dálaigh himself was said to have lived in a house in the townland of Corra.
Head of his family, Ó Dálaigh is first recorded in 1590 when, as ‘Eneas keaghe [caoch – the squinting or one-eyed] O Daly of Moyntervarye’, he received a pardon in the company of many O'Driscoll and O'Mahony nobles. During the Nine Years War he was noted for composing a poem, c.1599–1600, possibly to earn protection from the confederate leader Red Hugh O'Donnell (qv), whose forces were raiding Thomond. He may have feared that O'Donnell would raid Desmond, and as a result he ridiculed families that offended Red Hugh but praised O'Donnell himself and the wider O'Donnell family. This poem is the famous satire beginning ‘Muintir Fhiodhnacha na mionn’ (‘The family of Fidhnach of relics’). Towards the end of the war Ó Dálaigh was arrested for bringing messages from the confederate leaders to the O'Sullivans. He was brought before the president of Munster, Sir George Carew (qv), and remanded for trial. He seems to have attempted to mitigate his circumstances by claiming that his family received their lands from Carew's ancestor, adding that ‘the service which O'Daly and his progeny were to do . . . was . . . to be their [the Carews'] rhymers, or chroniclers’ (Pacata Hibernia, ii, 528–9). He must have been successful in his appeal, as in a pardon in 1604 he was recorded as ‘Eneas Odaly otherwise O'Daly [chief of his family] of Cahir . . . yeoman’. His estate was ‘the towns and lands of Ballyorroone [Ballyroon], containing three carrucates of land’, valued at 10 shillings per annum (O'Reilly, clxxvi). In 1611 Ó Dálaigh mortgaged these lands to four friends and alienated the western portion to a Carolus O'Daly without licence. He and his son Aonghus Óg still occupied the remainder, and for £13 could re-enter and take possession of all their lands.
In an inquisition taken at Cork in 1624 it is stated that Ó Dálaigh died on 16 December 1617. A statement found with the last stanza of his satire ‘Muintir Fhiodhnacha na mionn’ states that he was murdered in the house of the O'Meagher chieftain in north Tipperary by one of O'Meagher's servants, as revenge for satirising his lord. The statement reads: ‘a servant of trust of Muintir-Mheachair stood up, and said, that the Red Bard should never satirize any Meagher . . . with that he made a fierce thrust of the sharp knife . . . in the neck of Aonghus, so that he began to throw up his heart's blood on the spot’ (O'Donovan, 84–5). However, this story may be apocryphal, as many stanzas appear to be later additions to this poem.
Aonghus Ó Dálaigh has left an important legacy as a bardic poet. He is most famous for his satire but a number of additional poems by him survive. He composed a 168-verse poem on the death of Donough Finn MacCarty beginning ‘Tainic lén do leath Mhogha’ (‘Misfortune has come over Leath Mhogha’), and he may also be the author of the poem beginning ‘Fada mé ar mearughadh sligheadh’. He is known to have married and had at least one son; his descendants were still living in the Bantry area in the 1850s.
More information on this entry is available at the National Database of Irish-language biographies (Ainm.ie).