Mac Cruitín, Aodh ‘Buí’ (MacCurtin, Hugh) (c.1680–1755), poet and antiquary, was born in the parish of Kilmacrehy, Co. Clare, close to the modern village of Liscannor. The MacCurtins belonged to the hereditary learned caste of Gaelic society and members of the family served the O'Briens of Thomond as seanchaithe (chroniclers) from the fourteenth century onwards. The MacCurtins' social status declined during the course of the seventeenth century and all that can be said of Mac Cruitín's immediate family with certainty is that his father's name was Conchobhar Óg. Some of his relatives still maintained the family's reputation for learning, and he appears to have been taught by Aindrias Mac Cruitín (qv), a kinsman and fellow poet, whose influence may be detectable in Aodh Buí's use of loose forms of the syllabic metres of bardic poetry in several of the poems that he composed for patrons. Mac Cruitín followed in the family tradition by spending his early adult years as a scribe and teacher in his native district. He married and had two daughters, but the poem beginning ‘Is trua do chás a shuaircbhean bhreá’ indicates that his relations with his wife were strained.
Mac Cruitín's corpus is both substantial and varied, comprising some fifty poems that range from encomiums composed for members of the Clare gentry – principally the O'Briens of Leamaneh and Ennistimon, and the O'Loghlens of Burren – to Jacobite verse intended for a popular audience, as well as works of a more personal nature. His early compositions include elegies (‘Scéal do chuala do bhuair Éire’ and ‘A dháimh le ndéantar dréachta sníofa’) for Daniel O'Brien (d. 1693) and his brother Charles (qv) (d. 1706) who were 4th and 5th Viscounts Clare respectively and successive colonels of the Régiment de Clare, an Irish regiment in the French service. The poem beginning ‘A shaoi 's a shagart tá ag seasamh go síorchróga’ denounced those who took an oath abjuring the Stuart pretender James III, and probably dates from 1709. The long poem beginning ‘A Bhanba is feasach dham do scéala’, in which Ireland appears in the guise of a tearful woman lamenting her fate, is a metrical survey of Irish history and occurs in a large number of extant manuscripts. Around 1713 Mac Cruitín moved to Dublin, where he associated with the circle of Irish scribes grouped around Seán (qv) and Tadhg Ó Neachtain (qv). He also translated genealogical and historical texts for Anglo-Irish patrons who included William Hawkins (1670–1736), Ulster King of Arms; Anthony Raymond (qv); and Aaron Crossly, author of The peerage of Ireland (1724). While in Dublin, Mac Cruitín was imprisoned for reasons that are unclear, but having appealed for assistance to his patron Sir Donat O'Brien of Dromoland, who was both an MP and a privy counsellor, he was released without being tried. This episode has been linked to the publication in 1717 of Mac Cruitín's first book, A brief discourse in vindication of the antiquity of Ireland, which strongly criticised a history of Ireland written by Sir Richard Cox (qv), a former lord chancellor. This explanation seems unlikely as Cox, a high tory, lost his political influence on the accession of George I in 1714. Furthermore, Mac Cruitín's Brief discourse relied on Foras feasa ar Éirinn by Geoffrey Keating (qv), and would have been much less objectionable to the authorities than his Jacobite verse in Irish. He had returned to Clare by 1721 and one of his best-known poems, ‘Ar aonach má théid sin ar uair de ló’, which satirises prosperous but uneducated peasants, appears to have been composed during the 1720s. About 1727 he travelled to the Irish Franciscan college at Louvain, where his second book, The elements of the Irish language grammatically explained in English, appeared in 1728. This is also a derivative work, being little more than an edited version of an unpublished manuscript grammar by the Rev. Francis Walsh (qv). Within a short time Mac Cruitín crossed into French Flanders, where he served from October 1728 to August 1729 as a private in the Régiment de Clare – a unit that contained many officers and men from his native county. In a song composed at Christmas 1728 (‘Is grinn an tsollamhain chím fén Nollaig seo’) he looked forward to a successful invasion of Britain and the execution of George II. Having left the army, he assisted the Rev. Conchobhar Ó Beaglaoich (Conor Begley) in the preparation of an English–Irish dictionary that was published at Paris in 1731. Mac Cruitín appears to have remained in France until 1739, when he returned to Co. Clare and established a school in his native parish.
He died in 1755 and the churchyards at Kilmacrehy and Kilvoydane (near Corrofin) have both been identified as his resting place. While his school was situated close to the former, his daughters are known to have been living at Corrofin in 1761 and the latter may therefore be considered the more likely location.
More information on this entry is available at the National Database of Irish-language biographies (Ainm.ie).