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Maghnus Ó Domhnaill was born in
County Donegal.
His father was Hugh Ó Domhnaill, Chief of
the sept of the northern Ua Domhnaill [O'Donnell] and holder of the English title Lord of
Tirconnell.
It is recorded in The Annals Of The Four Masters (1632)
that Manghus deputized for his
father during 1510-1512 so it is unlikely that he was born as late as 1500, the year
usually attributed to his birth.
In 1527 Ó Domhnaill built Lifford Castle and it was there that he wrote Betha Colaim
Chille (1532), a hagiography of Saint Colmcille, gleaned from oral and literal sources. In 1537 Ó Domhnaill succeeded to the Chieftainship of the Ua Domhnaill and in 1538 he married his second wife Lady Eleanor McCarthy, the guardian of the twelve year old Gerald Fitzgerald, heir of the executed 'Silken Thomas' Fitzgerald of Kildare. Henry VIII suspected the Fitzgeralds and many prominent Irish families of plotting an insurrection and Ó Domhnaill was under suspicion for harbouring the young Fitzgerald. The English King's suspicions proved true when Ó Domhnaill and Conn O'Neill led a war against the English army garrisoned in Ireland. However Ó Domhnaill and O'Neill were defeated by the English at Lake Belahoe, County Monaghan in 1539 afterwhich Ó Domhnaill agreed to 'Surrender and Regrant' his lands to the Crown in 1540. He sent a letter of submission to King Henry VIII, swore the Oath of Fealty and in 1542 he wrote to King Henry asking for a gold chain of Office which symbolized his loyalty to the English Crown. From 1548 Ó Domhnaill's son Calvagh pursued his father until he captured and imprisoned him in Lifford Castle in 1555. Ó Domhnaill composed love poetry in Irish in prison and his poem Cridhe lán do smuaintighthibh is about the Lady Eleanor McCarthy who left him after he surrendered to the Crown. The translation is by the Earl of Longford as published in his Poems from the Irish (1944).© |
| tarla dhúinne ré n-imtheacht; caidhe neach dá uaibhrighe ris nách sgar bean a intleacht? Brón mar fhás na fíneamhna tarla oram re haimsir; ní guth dhamhsa mímheanma tré a bhfaicthear dúinn do thaidhbhsibh. Sgaradh eóin re fíoruisge, nó is múchadh gréine gile, mo sgaradh re sníomhthuirse tar éis mo chompáin chridhe. |
Full of strange thoughts do I find My heart that hath lost its love For a woman the proudest mind From its firm base could remove. For my woe like a clumbering vine My dejected spirit hath bound, And no shame it is that I pine For the ghost that compass me round. The bird from the Spring must part And the bright sun sink and be gone: And torn is my weary heart For my sweet companion. |
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