Mac Craith, Aindrias (c.1710–c.1795), poet, was born probably at Fantstown, near Kilmallock, Co. Limerick. Nothing is known of his immediate family or their circumstances, but by the early 1730s Mac Craith was teaching in the village of Croom, where he may have succeeded Seán Ó Tuama (qv), a fellow schoolmaster and poet. Although Mac Craith was commonly known as ‘an Mangaire Súgach’ (the ‘Merry Peddler’), an alias that he used in his poems, there is no evidence that he was ever a peddler and he would appear to have earned his living as a teacher throughout his life.
Mac Craith and Ó Tuama were close friends for many years and were the most prominent of the ‘Maigue poets’, a literary coterie that frequented the latter's inn and took its name from the river on which Croom is situated. Mac Craith's earliest datable works reflect his contacts with members of this circle. When, about the year 1735, he composed a quatrain (‘Fáilte tré fháilte agus trí’) to welcome the prominent Cork poet and Jacobite propagandist Seán Clárach Mac Domhnaill (qv) to Croom, the visitor was also greeted in verse by Ó Tuama and by Fr Nicholas O'Donnell, guardian of the Franciscan friary at Adare. Similarly, a composition of 1736 (‘Trím néalta is minic mé ag déanamh cumha’), denouncing a member of the Dominican community at Kilmallock who had conformed to the established church, echoed compositions on the same subject by Ó Tuama and Tomás Ó Gliosáin. While Mac Craith's Jacobite and catholic outlook was conventional, his heavy drinking and sexual misdemeanours – features of his personality that found expression in drinking songs (e.g. ‘Nuair a théim go tigh an tábhairne’, ‘Go tábhairne an ghliogair nuair 'thigim’) and in songs of a sexually explicit nature (e.g. ‘Ag taisteal na dtriúch go dubhach im aonar’, ‘Sealad le haiteas ag taisteal na dúiche dhom’) – led to friction with Fr William Leo, parish priest of Croom. Apparently as a result of this conflict, Mac Craith was obliged to leave the district around 1744. This event inspired what is now his best-known composition: the song beginning ‘Slán is céad ón dtaobh so uaim’, in which he expressed his sorrow at parting from friends and described the loneliness of life among strangers.
Mac Craith's writings permit his subsequent movements around Co. Limerick to be traced but not to be accurately dated. Having left Croom, he spent some time at Ballyneety; he was at Bruree in 1748; ten years later he was living at Ballingarry; he subsequently resided in the Grange area; and he moved to Bruff in 1787. Songs composed by Mac Craith in the 1740s reflected the sense of expectation produced in the catholic population by the war of Austrian succession (‘Is súbhach liom an scéal’ and ‘A bhile den fhoireann nach gann’) and by Prince Charles's campaign in Scotland (‘Tá Pruise agus Poland fós ar mearthall’ and ‘A dhalta nár dalladh le dlaoithe’). Defeat in Scotland and the return of peace lessened Mac Craith's interest in political matters, and his output during the 1750s is mainly notable for a series of poems in which he engaged in bitter personal attacks on Seán Ó Tuama. Mac Craith initiated the exchanges with a song beginning ‘Is duine thú a dhíolas steancán’, but the reason for the ill-will between the former friends is unclear. Early British reverses in the Seven Years War prompted Mac Craith to compose a further Jacobite song (‘Cé fada mé i gcúib’) in 1758, and in the same year he lamented (‘Sin taom do rinn creach tréad agus treabh’) the death of his former adversary, Fr William Leo. In 1775 death also reconciled him to Seán Ó Tuama, whose learning and personal qualities he extolled in a moving elegy (‘Is fada fá smúit gan múscailt Phoebus’). About 1782 the Volunteer movement drew a final expression of political enthusiasm from the poet when he praised Col. Richard Quin of the Adare corps in a song (‘Tá leoghan lannach lúfar leathan lúbach láidir’).
Mac Craith married late in life and nothing is known about his wife, but he had one daughter with whom he spent his final years at Fantstown. He died in or about 1795 and is buried in Kilmallock. His papers were left to a younger poet, Seán Ó Domhnaill (c.1780–c.1850), but are said to have been destroyed towards the end of the nineteenth century.
More information on this entry is available at the National Database of Irish-language biographies (Ainm.ie).