Dáibhí Ó Bruadair (1625 – January 1698) was a 17th-century Irish language poet.
This patronage was vital, as Ó Bruadair was the first of the 17th-century poets to attempt to live purely from his poetry, in the manner of the professional bards of the medieval period.
It would seem that this attempt was not particularly successful, as his poem Is mairg nár chrean le maitheas saoghalta indicates that he was reduced to working as a farm labourer.
[citation needed] He died in poverty and, as poems such as Mairg nach fuil 'na Dhubhthuata ("O It's best be a total boor") show, with bitterness on him towards the 'blind ignorant crew' that was the uneducated peasantry.
As a poet, he wrote on historical and political subjects, as well as producing elegies on a number of his patrons, satires on Cromwellian planters, religious poems and, almost uniquely amongst Gaelic poets,[citation needed] at least two epithalamia.