The Ford of Ferdiad

County Louth Archaeological and History Society

The Ford of FerdiadAuthor(s): Joseph DolanSource: Journal of the County Louth Archaeological Society, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Dec., 1924), pp.262-266Published by: County Louth Archaeological and History SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27728195 .

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ije Jforb of Jferbtab

By Joseph Dolan.

WHE Fight of Cuchulain and Ferdiad at the Ford, the most famous and most romantic episode in Irish legendary history, gives Ardee a unique

interest.

The identification of the actual site of the Ford?the place of combat? is, therefore, of importance.

The Bridge over the Dee in the main street seems at first thought to be the

spot where the Ford must have been.

As the ford was the thoroughfare at which travellers crossed the river, roads must have come into use leading to and from it on each bank, and when in later times bridges were introduced, and a bridge was erected at Ardee to replace the ford, one would assume that the bridge would be built directly over the ford to connect the two existing roads, and therefore that the Bridge of Ardee which crosses the river in the main street, would be the site of the Ford of Ferdiad.

It would seem most unlikely that a bridge should be erected at another part of the river, away from, instead of at the ford which it was meant to replace, and that an artificial connection of new roads should be made to it and the old roads and thoroughfare at the Ford abandoned.

Yet this is apparently what took place. The original Ford of Ardee, the Ford of Ferdiad, was not at the Bridge, but

at the further or western end of St. John Street, about 350 yards west up the river from the bridge, where the roadway (a) between the Workhouse garden wall and the Cloghan Bridge stream if continued as it formerly was, would meet the river at (F).

This is the local tradition, saved for us by the Ordnance Survey letter writers of 1836, though all but lost by the next generation of townspeople?and confirmed

by topographical evidence.

The choice of a different site for a bridge, away from the ford, may have been made to get advantage of high banks for its foundations. A ford where necessarily



THE FORD OF FERDIAD 263

there were no river banks, and where the road sloped down to the water level would not supply any foundation for planks or masonry for a bridge. This might have caused the transfer of the thoroughfare to a more suitable site for a bridge.

The Ordnance Survey letters of Messrs. O'Keeffe and O'Connor, written at

Ardee 27th January, 1836, and published in Louth Archaeological Journal, 1922, p. 134, runs as follows :?

" Ardee town is called in Irish t>Aile a?a ^tvoiA-o, pronounced X)am' a \kiat>

(|\ broad), for which name the people account thus : Fionn MacCumhail they say, kept his castle at Hacklim (mutLAij; Aititn) [2 miles S.E. of Ardee]. The Fear dhiadh hearing of Fin's fame came to challenge him to single combat." Then follows the common story of the giant's being frightened away by the pretence of

Fionn's wife that her husband in the cradle was the child and that he could lift up the house in his arms and turn it round .... When he asked for a drink .... "

The woman told him that her men would not be content with any quantity of water that could be conveyed to the house, but went themselves to the At there below and satisfied themselves.

The Fear dhiadh accordingly went, but as he was drinking, Fionn's wife, by preternatural means sent an enchanted poisoned dart (54 buig) after him, which

despatched him on the spot. From this circumstance the At?ford was ever after

called At pif-oiAX), or the Ford of the Fear-dhiadh."

The letter continues :? "

James Dolan, a native of Ardee, went with us to the Ford and pointed out where F-dh was killed and also his grave, which is about 14 yards long and about

9 or 10 feet broad, about 2 yards of the tumulus in the middle is cut away so as to be level with the ground?it lies immediately to the west of the river Dee about 80 perches west of Ardee."

Dolan told the story of his death thus :? " When the Fear-dhiadh flourished, Conchobhar was King of Ulster ; he lived

near Armagh, his territory extending to near Drogheda. Conall-Cearnach was his

grand-master or defender of his territory, and Cuchullen was his Lieut.-Grand

Master.

Cuchullen was at Castletown, called in Irish DurmcAlgAti, near Dundalk, he

encroached upon or did some injury to the territory of the Queen of Connaught, TTIe-obA An CruiACAin, who employed Fear-dhiadh to revenge the injury upon him.

They met at the place now called At pirvt)i,At) (the townland yet retains the name, it is called in the name book Area) [this note?a perfect identi

fication?is O'Keeffe and O'Connor's?Editor] within 80 perches off Ardee to the West where an engagement took place between them. . . . He [Cuchullen] then

gave Fear-dhiadh a mortal wound with the 5a but^ of which he immediately died : whence the ford is called At prv-oi-AT) and the town t>Aile AtA pir\T)iAT)."

This measurement of distance, given by the Ordnance men is approximate enough to locate the site of the Ford, in conjunction with their note of its being in the townland of Area, and with one living man's tradition of its site and with the undoubtedly reliable tradition of the late Mr. James Halpenny, who lived the

whole of a long life near by, that the stage-coach used to cross the river at this spot not much earlier and perhaps

even later than a hundred years ago. "

The place now called At PjvoiAt) (the townland yet retains the name?Area?)

within 80 perches off Ardee to the West."



264 COUNTY LOUTH ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL

" It (Ferdiad's grave) lies immediately to the West of the river Dee about

80 perches W. of Ardee."

80 perches " West of Ardee

" must mean West of the Main Street at the Bridge.

80 perches make 440 yards of statute perches, 560 yards of Irish perches. This

though accurate enough for identification is somewhat in excess of the actual length as scaled from the map, along the river or measured by chain by road which makes

only about 350 yards. I cannot suggest how to reconcile this overestimate with their meticulous detail on many subjects unless that

" 80 perches

" was their pedantic

way of saying a quarter of a mile, which would be a rough estimate of the distance.

In a later reference to the Ford (a week after on 3rd Feb., 1836) the Ordnance men say (1923 Journal, p. 206), in enumerating the finds of antiquities in the district :?" There was also found at the Ford about \ of a mile to the W. of Ardee a gold ring." This does not agree with their earlier account of the distance, but it is likely that only a rough location was given here, as distinct from the more accurate description needed in the accounts of the Ford itself.

The report made to the Ordnance men of the finding of a gold ring at the Ford is another bit of evidence of its having being a place of recourse.

The statement that the reputed owner of the ring, Colonel Fleming, was one of Cromwell's men is at variance with the well-preserved tradition (though not

supported by the Books of Survey and Distribution) that Fleming, a relation of the Lord of Slane, was the owner of Ardee Demesne castle and estate, and that

Ruxton, his Cromwellian successor, lay in wait for him in the field on the north bank of the Ford (another corroboration of the site)--or

as another version told, half

a mile further west at the field called the Big Borough?as he crossed the river, and there killed him and took forcible possession of his castle and lands.

This confusion of the Ferdiad legend with the later commonplace story of Fionn and the identification of Ferdiad with the giant must be a modern growth, or perhaps a graft made by some ill-informed synthetic historian of the place. The

gae bulg feature is evidently a literary interpolation. The more or less correct version as told by James Dolan may only have been

earned from books or from literary, not popular, local, tradition, for the letter writers cite

" the people

" as the authority for the other tale. But it would seem

likely that the name of Ferdiad and the tradition of his death in a combat at the Ford had lingered with the generations of the native Irish race who had held on here through Norman and Elizabethan and Cromwellian plantations, and that the site of the Ford remained of common knowledge, for the ford itself was not very long out of use in 1836.

The tradition perished altogether save with one man, within the last century. I could never find a trace of it or any knowledge of the names of Ferdiad or

Cuchulain from any of the old people of Ardee, who died within the last thirty five years. James Dolan who was able to show the Ordnance Survey men the

grave of Ferdiad in 1836, though an old student who shared much of his lore with his nephew, my father, for twenty years later, never told him of this legend or of the Grave. The only person living who ever learned any of it locally is Mr. Patrick

Byrne, who lives on this disused roadway to the Ford, and who heard from his prede cessor, Owen McGeough, a man who would have been born over a hundred years

ago, and from other old neighbours the story that two giants fought a battle in the field along the river under the Workhouse grounds, and that one of them was killed and was buried near by.



THE FORD OF FERDIAD 265

The tradition of the site of the Ford is corroborated as O'Keeffe and O'Connor notice", by the name of the townland which is still in use?Areea, At fif-onvo,?the internal *o has become aspirated in pronunciation since the English language crysta lised the name in the form Ardee. This townland name

" Areea

" in pronunciation

made "

Ardee "

in Ordnance maps, does not apply to the land on which the town of Ardee stands?that is mostly the townland of

" Townparks "?but only begins

here, west of the town.

As a matter of fact the actual field along the river at which the ford was, and in which the tradition stages the combat is immediately outside instead of within the eastern mearing of the townland of Areea or Ardee as defined by the Ordnance

Map, but this seems an arbitrary or erroneous diversion of the boundary line from the stream which is the boundary to this point and which might naturally be taken as the boundary for the remainder of its straight course to the river.

But another verification of the site of the Ford is the fact that the old road from Drogheda and the south (b)?the only road till the construction of the present "

Drogheda Road "

or "

New Road "

(c) by the Speaker Foster, Chairman of the Grand Jury, about 125 years ago?reached the town at this point of St. John Street

(b), and that its direct continuation which was open in 1836 led straight to the Ford, and most important of all is the statement of the late Mr. James Halpenny, already referred to, that the stage-coach from Dublin to Deny, which came by this road



266 COUNTY LOUTH ARCHAEOLOGICAL JOURNAL

from Drogheda, continued down the roadway (a) and crossed the river at the Ford

(f) instead of turning up St. John Street to the Bridge, so that the ford was used

contemporaneously with the Bridge within the last hundred and fifty years, perhaps down to a hundred years ago.

No trace remains of the roadway which led from the Ford, on the north bank of the river, it has been absorbed into the field.

The water is now deep and the banks a couple of feet high at the point where the Ford was, but this is due to the drainage operations and the straightening and

diverting of the course of the river which were carried out in the first half of the nineteenth century?partly at least before the earliest Ordnance Maps (1836). The river bed was altered somewhat towards the north to straighten it a little west of the ford?some of its earlier course can still be traced in this field.

The Bridge may have been erected at a different spot than the ford in order to get advantage of high banks for its foundations, as a ford when there were no

banks and when the road sloped down to the water level would not supply any foundation for planks

or masonry.

The Grave of Ferdiad.

The disappearance of the grave of Ferdiad within the last 90 years is a most

disappointing loss. There is not a trace, nor a tradition of the site, nor of its very existence left.

From the Ordnance Letters it must have been of remarkable appearance?

14 yards long, 9 or 10 feet broad.

Its location was evidently in the field at the Ford, between the workhouse and the river.

" Dolan went with us to the Ford and pointed out where F-dh. was

killed and also his grave?it lies immediately to the west" [must mean south] of the river Dee about 80 perches west of Ardee ..." They met at the place

now

called At fif-oiAt) within 80 perches off Ardee to the west." There is the track of a stream bed in part of this field which is said to have been the former river course before the drainage operations. These alterations and cleaning of the river may

have, probably, obliterated all trace of the grave after its having survived through the previous 1800 years.



The Ford of Ferdiad

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