In 1546 Tadhg Ó Cobhthaigh, called ‘chief preceptor of Ireland and Scotland in poetry’, was arrested by the Dublin administration ‘for his attachment to the Irish’, ‘and confined for eighteen weeks in the King's castle’.
Another member of the family, Uaithne, son of Uilliam Ó Cobhthaigh, ‘the most learned in Ireland in poetry’, ‘was treacherously slain at night [along with his wife] .
The poem beginning "Dá néll orchra os iath Uisnigh" (Two clouds of woe over Uisneach's land), which is 150 verses long, deals with the murder of the poet Uaithne Ó Cobhthaigh and his wife in 1556 There were at least three other families of the name, located in the regions of Limerick-Kerry, Down, west Cork, and Galway.
Acclaimed celtic scholar Kuno Meyer named at least two O'Cobhthaighs in his list of irish poets (filidh) over the past 2000 years.
According to historian C. Thomas Cairney, the O'Coffeys were chiefly a family of the Corca Laoghdne who in turn came from the Erainn who were the second wave of Celts who settled in Ireland from 500 to 100 BC.