Antoine Ó Raifteirí (also Antoine Ó Reachtabhra, Anthony Raftery) (30 March 1779 – 25 December 1835) was an Irish language poet who is often called the last of the wandering bards. Biography Antoine Ó Raifteirí was born in Killedan, near Kiltimagh in County Mayo. His father was a weaver. He had come to Killedan from County Sligo to work for the local landlord, Frank Taaffe. Ó Raifteirí's mother was a Brennan from the Kiltimagh area. She and her husband had nine children. Antoine was an intelligent and inquisitive child. Some time between 1785 and 1788, Antoine Ó Raifteirí's life took a huge turn. It all started with a cough. Soon two of the children began experiencing headaches. Another child had a high fever. A rash appeared on Antoine's hand. It caused severe itching. Soon the children were covered in that same rash. They had contracted smallpox. Within three weeks, eight of the nine children had died. One of the last things young Antoine saw before going blind was his eight siblings laid out dead upon the floor. As Ó Raifteirí's father was a weaver, he had not experienced the worst of that era's poverty, but it would be much more difficult for his son to escape hardship. He lived by playing his fiddle and performing his songs and poems in the mansions of the Anglo-Irish gentry. His work draws on the forms and idiom of Irish poetry, and although it is conventionally regarded as marking the end of the old literary tradition, Ó Raifteirí and his fellow poets did not see themselves in this way. In common with earlier poets, Antóin had a patron in Taaffe. One night Frank sent a servant to get more drink for the house. The servant took Antóin with him, both of them on one of Franks good horses. Whatever the cause (said to be speeding) Antóin's horse left the road and ended up in the bog, drowned or with a broken neck. Frank banished Antóin and he commenced the life of an itinerant. According to An Craoibhín (Douglas Hyde) one version of the story is that Antóin wrote Cill Aodáin (as DH Kileadan, County Mayo, his most famous work apart from Anach Cuan, to get back in Frank Taaffe's good books. Taaffe however was displeased at the awkward way Antóin worked his name into the poem, and then only at the end. Another version