Rechtgal ua Siadail was a Gaelic-Irish poet who flourished in the late 8th and early 9th centuries.
Biography
Though unmentioned in the extant Irish annals, "Rechtgal ua Siadail ... was highly regarded and fragments of his poetry are cited no less than seven times in various poetical and other learned compilations of the Middle Irish period."
His appellation, ua Siadail, "is undoubtedly at such an early period to be taken as a patronymic rather than as [a] surname."
Surviving fragments known to have been composed by Rechtgal are:
Summarizing, Donncha O hAodha states:
It is evident that Rechtgal was highly regarded in the schools and tha this poems were remembered in them, even if his work was not always cited with approbation. It is clear too from the few surviving fragments of his poetry that he composed praise-poems for some of the most powerful kings of his own time, and indeed these fragments seem also to furnish testimony in regard to the freedom of movement which we know to have been allowed by poets in a unique fashion.