Life
?1565-1613 [var. ?1570-1617; Eochaidh Ua hEódhasa; O’Hussey; fl.1630]; b. Enniskillen; ollamh to Maguire, enjoying old style right to share chief’s bed; rival of Tadhg Dall Ó hUiginn; poss. br. or cousin of Gille Bríghde, who went to Louvain; receives mention in the Fiants of Elizabeth (nos. 4810, 5602 and 5716) both during the chieftainship of Cú Chonnacht Maguire (d.1589), and that of his successor Hugh Maguire; personal friend of Hugh whose bard he was; his poem describing the winter campaign of Maguire and Hugh O’Neill in the South, 1599-1600, was freely translated by Mangan [q.v.]; continued to hold lands at Ballyhose after the plantation of Ulster; his last poem translates the recent war into classical terms, with Red Hugh O’Donnell as Caesar, Hugh Maguire as Crassus, the English as Pompey. ODNB DIW FDA OCIL
Criticism
Tomás Ó Rathile, Danta Grádha (Cork 1926); Eleanor Knott, An Introduction to Irish Syllabic Poetry of the Period 1200-1600 (Cork 1928); Dioghluim Dánta and Aithdioghluim Dána [sic], both by Lambert McKenna S.J. (Dublin 1938, 1939); also commentaries by O. J. Bergin in Studies VII (1918), X (1921), XI (1922) and XII (1923); and see S. H. O’Grady, Catalogue of Irish MSS in the British Museum, pp.448-81.
References
Dictionary of National Biography refers to him briefly as an Irish poet, fl. 1630.
Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1, prints The Winter Campaign [pp.278-79]..
Note - the following phrases extracted from earlier entry with prob. proveance in ODNB: compares Hugh to a pelican when he is killed in battle; died in high regard among Gael and Gall; celebrates the beauty of Rose O’Byrne, burnt alive in the yard of Dublin Castle". (However, Hugh O’Neill died peacefully in Rome and not in battle.)
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