Ford, Ballymacsradeen, Co. Limerick
Co. Limerick |
Rural Infrastructure
A shallow crossing on the Camoge River in County Limerick carries a name that shifts between the mundane and the mythological depending on which map you consult.
The 1840 Ordnance Survey six-inch edition marks the spot simply as a weir; a later Cassini edition renames it the Ford of the Chariot of Fergus, a designation that pulls the crossing point out of the realm of agricultural geography and into the Ulster Cycle, the great body of early Irish narrative literature that includes the Táin Bó Cúailnge.
The ford takes its name from Fergus Mac Roig, a hero of the Red Branch, the warrior class central to those tales. The antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westropp, writing in 1919 and 1920, drew a detailed picture of the site and its surroundings. He noted that an ancient roadway led from the fording point to a pair of conjoined ringforts nearby, ringforts being circular earthwork enclosures that served as farmsteads or defended residences in early medieval Ireland, and he identified those forts as the likely assembly place of the Óenach Cairbre, a ceremonial gathering. Westropp observed that the ford itself is too wide to be held by a single warrior, contrasting it explicitly with the famous ford defended by Cú Chulainn in the Táin. He suggested that Fergus would instead have commanded the crossing from the slightly elevated ground near the conjoined earthworks. Whether those ringforts correspond to the Ceann Dúin Asail, or Head-fort of Asail, mentioned in the medieval Book of Rights, Westropp considered probable but uncertain. The river here also forms the townland boundary between Ballymacsradeen East and Monaster North, placing it at a threshold in both a legal and a legendary sense.
The ford lies in low-lying pasture roughly 315 metres south-east of the Cistercian Abbey of Monasteranenagh and about 115 metres west of Monaster Bridge. Westropp noted that the abbey bridge and an old mill mark the shallow on the Camoge, and those landmarks remain useful for orienting yourself on the ground. The terrain is gentle but agricultural, so conditions underfoot will vary with the season. The conjoined ringforts associated with the ancient roadway are the main structural features to look for once you have located the crossing itself.