Little or nothing is reliably recorded about his youth or family, but it is known that, despite the Penal Laws in force in Ireland, he received a comprehensive education, either in the home or in a hedge school, but most likely in both.
In Croom, County Limerick, he frequented the tig táirne public house of Seán Ó Tuama, a good friend and another Maigue poet.
[citation needed] Mac Domhnaill died In 1754 and buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, Charleville in the centre of the graveyard, on the site of the medieval parish church.
[citation needed] While not a true bardic poet like Dáibhí Ó Bruadair, MacDómhnaill adhered to the complex rhyming methodology of the bards.
The highly embellished language fell into disuse after the strict bardic schools closed down and a literary standard became impossible to maintain evenly across the country.