An Irish Mudcat gathering is to be held in Portaferry, Co Down 28 Feb. - March 3. In the thread discussing the event, there is argument over whether we are going to have great crack or whether we are going to have great craic.

it goes something like this-
John Moulden and I said that "crack" should be spelled "crack" when one is writing in English, as the word is not originally of Gaelic origin. Then Guest still interested replied,
"When i say Gaelic, i am refering to the Irish language (Gaeilge) and to modern Scots Gaelic (Gaeidhlig), which are basically the same, well historically anyway. Craic indeed should always be written as craic, as it is a word from another language being used within English.

"Now, enough of all this aul craic. :-)"

Noreen: "What John Moulden and Phillipa are saying (I think) is that the word 'crack' is from the English language originally, and has latterly been spelled 'craic' to give it (false) Irishness. This agrees with what I've heard from other sources."

guest interested go fóill [still interested]: ""interested go fóill" Noreen: I'm sorry but that's completely inaccurate.

The only word 'crack' of English origin is that which means crevice or sharp sound etc.

The word 'craic', however, meaning good fun etc, is entirely of Irish Gaelic origin. Just check any Irish language dictionary or any dictionary of English etymology."

Ard Mhacha: "Hope you are all enjoying your visit to lovely Portaferry, regarding Craic, the old people from way back used the Craic word all over Ireland.
How often in my youth did I hear, "We had great craic" and the people who had the fun or craic were all born in the late 1800s."

Those of us who spell crack with a k have not yet given any evidence to back our case, but the opposition has given spurious evidence.
Ard Mhacha, were your forebearers speaking Irish or were they speaking English? You didn't quote them as saying "Bhí craic ar dóigh againn" but ""We had great craic [sic]"

still-interested - go fóill: so far what I've seen in dictionaries does not agree with you. The Irish seem to have evolved a special sense of the word crack from the use of crack - in English- to mean conversation, which I imagine comes from its meaning of sound (which apparently is how it came to mean something breaking, when it gives a loud crack). Ó Domhnaill's Irish-language dictionary (1977) includes the word "craic" as conversation, but so does it include loan words such as "jab" (a job) and "júdo" (the martial art) (and "j" is a loan letter too, I believe). I could find no entry for "craic" in Dineen's Irish-language dictionary (1927) or in the Scots Gaelic dictionaries of Dwelly (1901) and McLaren (1925)- even though I looked for other possible spellings such as "cnag" and "creaic" for words with the appropriate meaning.

The 20 vol Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989) has nearly 3 pages of definition for "crack" (wisecrack, crack-shot, etc)including 5. a brisk talk, conversation; pl. news, Scottish and north dialect b. A sharp or cutting remark, colloquial (orig. U.S.) and c. Anglo-Ir. Fun, amusement; mischief. Frequently in phrase "for the crack," for fun.
note it is attributed to "Anglo-Irish" not Irish Gaelic. 20th century examples are given from "Myles Na Gopaleen" ("You say you'd like a joke or two for a bit of crack") , The Cork Examiner and the Sunday Times. For the closely related usuage 5a, examples include 1725 Ramsay "Gentle Shepherd" "Come sit down and gie's your cracks. What's a the news in town?" ; 1785 Burns "Holy Fair" "They're a' in famous tune For crack that day." 1810 Tannahill "Poems" (1846) "Gossips ay maun hae their crack" 1865 Thoreau "Cape Cod" "Having had another crack with the old man" etc etc.