Ó Dálaigh, Muireadhach Albanach (c.1180–c.1250) bardic poet, was born at Derryvarra, Co. Meath, son of Maolíosa Ó Dálaigh. He was living at Lisadell (hence his epithet ‘Leas-na-doill’) in Sligo in 1213 as poet to the O'Connors of Carbury, when he killed with an axe Finn Ó Brolloghan, steward of Domnall Mór O'Donnell, who had come to collect tribute for his lord. Muireadhach fled to Derrydonnell in the barony of Athenry, and sought the protection of Richard Fitzwilliam de Burgh, member of a Norman family resident in Connacht for thirty years, to whom he addressed the poem in praise of his beauty and his adoption of Gaelic culture, ‘Créd agaibh aoidhigh a gcéin’ (‘Whence comes it that you have guests from afar?’). But O'Donnell pursued him there, and from there to Thomond, where he had taken refuge with Donnchad Cairprech O'Brien (qv) (d. 1242). Muireadhach was expelled from the town of Limerick when O'Donnell laid siege to it. His life was protected throughout his time as a fugitive, because he was a man of learning. But he was finally banished to Scotland by the people of Dublin, with whom he had sought refuge. He remained there for more than fifteen years, making it his adopted land. He acquired there his soubriquet ‘Albanach’ and took the name Mac Muireadhaigh, and from him are descended the Scottish poetic family of the McMhuirich, ollamhs to Clann Raghnaill. Several of his poems are therefore preserved in the later Scottish manuscript known as the ‘Book of the dean of Lismore’. When living in Scotland, he visited the Holy Land, perhaps as a crusader and in expiation of the murder he had committed, where he composed a poem of exile. He passed through Ireland on his return, where he wrote a poem to Murchad Ó Briain, a descendant of Brian Bórama (qv), praising his ancestry. His most poignant poem is one written on the death of his wife, who had borne him eleven children in twenty years: ‘M'anam do sgar riomsa araoir’ (‘My soul parted from me last night’). His poem to the Virgin Mary, ‘Eistidh riomsa, a Mhuire Mhór’ (‘Hearken to me, O great Mary’) is also well known. His secular poetry exemplifies the ambivalent attitude of bardic poets to their patrons, for on the one hand he offered fulsome praise to the son of an Anglo-Norman colonist, and in a poem to Cathal Ua Conchobair (qv) (O'Connor) (d. 1224) some years later he expresses a wish that Cathal would ‘drive eastwards the foreigners who have seized Tara’.
From Scotland he wrote three poems to O'Donnell, pleading for forgiveness. He was eventually reconciled with him and given lands and possessions. According to tradition, he ended his days in a monastery in Ireland. His obit in the Annals of the Four Masters describe him as ollamh Éireann agus Alban, ‘ollamh of Ireland and Scotland’.