But this rath, a type of enclosed farmstead built during the early medieval period, typically between the fifth and twelfth centuries, carries a name that connects it not to some ancient chieftain or ecclesiastical patron but to a relatively recent local resident, a man called Darby Hayes.

When Ordnance Survey fieldworkers passed through the area in the 1840s, they noted that the fort had taken its name from Hayes, who had formerly lived at its foot. The detail was recorded in the Ordnance Survey Name Books for Kilcummin parish, which gathered local place-name lore alongside topographical observations. It is a small but telling survival: evidence that folk memory was attaching personal names to ancient monuments even as formal surveying was beginning to document them. The rath itself is modest in scale, roughly eighteen metres across on its north-east to south-west axis, with an earthen bank about three metres wide and standing less than a metre in height on either face. Inside, two conjoined hut sites are still visible, the kind of sunken or embanked domestic structures that would have sheltered inhabitants and perhaps livestock within the enclosure during its working life.