Encyclopedia > Daibhi O Bruadair (David O Bruadair)
Daibhi O Bruadair (David O Bruadair) (1625? – January 1698) was one of the most significant Irish languageIrish poets of the 17th century.
He was born either in County Cork or County Limerick and spent most of his adult life in the latter county, receiving the patronage of both Gaelic and Anglo-Irish landowners. This patronage was vital, as O Bruadair was the first of the 17th century poets to attempt to live purely from his poetry in the manner of the professional bards of the medieval period. It would seem that this attempt was not particularly successful, as his poem Is mairg nár chrean le maitheas saoghalts indicates that he was reduced to working as a farm labourer. He died in poverty.
As well as Irish, O Bruadair knew Latin and English. He was a poet of considerable range, and wrote on historical and political subjects, as well as producing elegies on a number of his patrons, bitter satires on Cromwellian planters, religious poems of real feeling and, almost uniquely amongst Gaelic poets, at least two epithalamia. His versification was equally varied, and he wrote in both syllabic and assonantalmetres.
David Wheatley salutes a new translation from Ciaran Carson of Brian Merriman's The Midnight Court
While the collapse of the Gaelic order gave bards such as Aodhagán O Rathaille and Dáibhí OBruadair a lifelong theme, Merriman has no time for tribal pieties: he treats the visionary aisling genre with all the reverence of Father Ted kicking Bishop Brennan up the arse.
Like his contemporary Lawrence Sterne, he is a prime example of the scabrous fl humour that runs through Irish writing from the anonymous author of the Vision of Mac Conglinne all the way to Merriman's latest translator, Ciaran Carson.
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