Mcgrath — Keepers of the Word

McGrath anglicises Mac Craith, probably built on grásta, ‘grace’. One branch served as hereditary poets to the O'Briens of Thomond; a second and separate branch, the Termon Magraths, held church lands on the Donegal-Fermanagh border as erenaghs — from that line came Miler Magrath, the sixteenth-century archbishop notorious for holding a Catholic and a Protestant see at the same time.

Two unrelated families under one name, one keeping poetry and law, the other keeping church ground through the most divided century Irish religion ever had.

Irish form: Mac Craith