Donal II had also been an aggressive seizer of lands during and especially following the Nine Years' War and his son's inheritance, thought to have been approaching 100,000 acres (or possibly greater considering all septs and territories under his control), was colossal for a Gaelic family of the time.
The great wandering Scottish poet Maol Domhnaigh Ó Muirgheasáin (Muldony O'Morrison) refers to Donal III as the Dragon of Clíodhna in a 1639 ode celebrating his accession to the chiefship of Clancahill.
The poem discusses Donal's ancestry, virtues, regional fame, as well as the ancient lineage of his wife Gylles O'Shaughnessy and her qualities (selected stanzas below):[3] Domhnall's son, dragon of Cliodhna, is guardian of the ancestral name;[4] hewill remit his authority to none other - he has accepted the law of his dynasty.The favourable reputation of the dynasts from whom he is descended he willmaintain by consent or by force; he will not relinquish their honour - standingis hereditary to Ó Donnabháin.Descendant of Donnabhán of the good deeds, his natural inheritance is todeserve fame; a just connection with his stock before him is his coming intothe regal succession.The daughter of Ó Seachnasaigh has obtained the palm of beauty with herserene countenance - meekness without narrowness of heart, humility,generosity and firmness.Fruitful palm tree of Dá Thí's Dwelling (Ireland), kind-hearted daughter ofRuaidhrí - having received the attributes of the dynasts from whom she isdescended, she longs for the greatness of honour.O'Donovan, and a number of his kinsmen, joined the so-called Irish Rebellion of 1641 under Donagh MacCarthy,[5] along with the MacCarthy Reagh (Cormac) and the O'Sullivan Beare, and together they besieged Cork city for three weeks in 1642 with over four thousand men.
Complaining of O'Donovan's other activities in 1642, the Reverend Urban Vigors writes:[6] Great O'Donovane, as the Irish call him, whose father was a most notorious Rebel, doth much spoyle about the Leape, Castlehevane, Bantry, Rosscarbery and divers other places; his father burnt the Towne of Rosse the last warrs...Later in the Irish Confederate Wars Donal III assisted his nextdoor neighbor James Tuchet, 3rd Earl of Castlehaven, who only lived two miles away across the harbour, in the taking of various fortifications in County Cork, notably Mallow, Doneraile, and the castles of Milton, Connagh, and Rostellan.
The infamously ungrateful Charles II of England, after first declaring they should be restored in their entirety, gave the rest away to Cromwell's soldiers in lieu of pay, O'Donovan not being a peer (although once he was landed as a number) and thus of little political consequence in this new British age.
As it is most often told, and as set forth in various depositions following the outrages on Protestants circa the 1640s, Dorothy had lent a sum of money to Donal, but when she later asked for it to be repaid he incomprehensibly hanged her, with the aid of his brother-in-law Teige-an-Duna MacCarthy, from the tower of Castle Donovan to eliminate her claim.
[15] The scholar Diarmuid Ó Murchadha considers the entire tradition to be "ill-founded", however, because a number of Protestant Carbery men of fine standing were present at Donal's death in 1660, and composed a testimonial to his excellence and good treatment of them during the conflicts,[16] with no mention made of Dorothy Forde or her family.
[18] Donal III also appears in the early-mid 19th century short story "Emma Cavendish" (author now unknown), as the host of the main character, an Englishman adventuring in Carbery, who refers to him as a decent man interested in the welfare of the English living there, making sure of their protection in his territories.