The ford at Aghanagh sits beside a road where a stream flows out from the base of a limestone scarp, and local tradition holds that any member of the O'Rourke family who crosses it will die within a year. It is the kind of curse with a precise origin story, a named saint, a named adversary, and a clear provocation, which sets it apart from the vaguer supernatural warnings attached to so many Irish sites.

According to tradition recorded by W. G. Wood-Martin in 1882, the O'Rourke of Breifny, the powerful Gaelic lordship that once controlled much of what is now counties Leitrim and Cavan, objected to the construction of a monastery nearby. St Maine, aware that the chief was travelling to halt the work, prayed that O'Rourke would be stopped at the ford. The prayer was answered. The saint's intervention fixed a permanent consequence to the crossing, at least for that particular dynasty. A saint's stone, the kind of sacred rock sometimes associated with early Christian figures and their local cults, is also said to have stood adjacent to the stream, and roughly eighty metres to the north-north-west lies St Maine's holy well, a holy well being a natural spring or water source venerated for its connection to a saint and often believed to possess healing properties. The ford, the well, and the stone together suggest a landscape that was once understood as a coherent sacred geography, centred on Maine and his authority over this stretch of ground.

The stream itself issues from the base of a limestone scarp, which in this part of Sligo means the kind of rocky, karstic terrain where water appears and disappears in ways that must have seemed remarkable to earlier inhabitants. The ford sits beside a road, so the crossing is easy enough to locate, though there is no monument to announce it.