Ó Rathaille, Aodhagán (1670-1728)

Irish Gaelic poet. Ó Rathaille was born in Kerry, on lands ruled in the middle ages by the MacCarthy Earls of Clancarty. He idolized the memory of the MacCarthys, and regarded himself as a descendant of their court bards. His poetry embodies the great Jacobite lament for the demise of Catholic Gaelic Ireland. A characteristic feature of his elegant, elegiac poems is the aisling, or patriotic dream-vision.

Although they were largely orally transmitted, his Gaelic poems survived in part and were edited bilingually for the Irish Texts Society in 1900, a revised edition being produced in 1911.