Dia libh a laochruidh Gaoidhiol

Dia libh a laochruidh Gaoidhiol is a poem by Aonghas mac Doighre Uí Dhálaigh. The title can be translated as 'God be with you, O war-band of the Gaels.'

In the poem, Uí Dhálaigh

"contrasts the hardship endured by the Uí Bhroin (Byrne) on the Wicklow mountains, not with the ease they would have enjoyed in peace-time, but with the prosperity of their Anglo-Irish enemies occupying the fertile lowlands which were once the patrimony of the Uí Bhroin themselves. ... [it belongs] ... to the late sixteenth century, when the original idea of the contrast between ease and hardship had become perhaps a little hackneyed, and required some new slant to lift it out of the commonplace."

References

• Katherine Simms (1990) "Images of Warfare in Bardic Poetry", Celtica 21.
• P Harbison (1976) 'native Irish arms and armour in medieval Gaelic literature, 1170-1600', The Irish Sword 12, 173-99
• S. Mac Airt (ed.) (1944) Leabhar Branach Dublin, no. 35.