Aindrias Mac Cuirtín

Aindrias Mac Cuirtín, or Mac Cuirtín (anglice Andrew Mac Cuirtín) belonged to a family of hereditary poets and genealogists. He was born in Moyglass, in the parish of Kilmurray, four or five miles south of Miltown Malbay, and spent most of his life in the same locality as professional poet, scribe, and teacher. Many of his poems are addresses to patrons or elegies on their deaths.^[1] Aindrias, even more than his kinsman Aodh Buidhe, had a professional hankering after the old syllabic metres, which were becoming quite obsolete in his day; and very regretfully he often found himself obliged to use the newer song metre (aisde thúta, “an uncouth measure”, he himself calls it) in order to win the intelligent appreciation of his audience. A number of the MSS. he transcribed still survive, ranging in date from 1703 to 1734. Among them is a volume which he complied in 1727 for Brian Ó Lochlainn, and which contains many poems addressed to the O’Loghlen family by himself, Aodh Buidhe, and others. He died in 1738,^[2] and was buried in the churchyard of Kilfarboy, a little to the north of Miltown Malbay. His elegy was written by Aodh Buidhe.

The origins of Clann Chruitín: chronicler-poets of the learned Gaelic tradition by Luke McInerney