The ford at Cahergal in County Galway carries that same logic, recorded as an archaeological monument in its own right, which is itself worth pausing on. That a shallow crossing point merits formal recognition speaks to how seriously such features were taken in the ancient organisation of the Irish landscape. Fords were not merely practical; they were liminal places, often the sites of agreements, disputes, and rituals, named and remembered in ways that paved roads rarely are.

The place-name Cahergal, from the Irish cathair gheal, most likely refers to a bright or white stone fort, a cathair being a type of dry-stone ringfort. Whether the ford took its name from such a structure nearby, or whether the two features grew up in relation to one another over centuries, is the kind of question the landscape itself sometimes answers. In many parts of Connacht, fords and fortified enclosures were deliberately sited in proximity, the one controlling movement, the other offering protection to those who lived beside it.