Sliabh Fuaid

When researching the history of my village in County Armagh, I came across two old papers I found to be very interesting. They're at JSTOR , “a not-for-profit organization helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.”

Both papers (see The Two Papers) were about a poem, from the Book of Leinster (published 1160, also watch short video), the poem maybe older. The papers were published by the County Louth Archaeological and History Society (CLAHS – I’ll refer to this later), one in 1932 and the second in 1933.

The poem was written in “Old Irish”. Prof. Eoin MacNeill (I’ll refer to him as Prof. MacNeill) translated the poem into Irish and then, from that, into English. It’s only thanks to him I have a version I can read. The paper implies he translated the poem in 1912, or before.

The poet is at a high point, named Sliabh Fuaid. In the poem he describes what he sees. There are descriptions, names of places and some of these places have an added word or more to describe them. Many are hills or mountains; some are low lying plains or lakes, and some something else. However, many of these names have been lost in time.

I’ll give you a bit of background as to why. In 1155 Pope Adrian IV (the only English Pope) issued a Papal Bull (basically an Act of Christian Parliament). It gave Henry II of England permission to invade Ireland. At this time the Catholic Church was all powerful and you needed the permission of the Pope to do things like this. Anyway, through the centuries many of the names of places in this poem have been Anglicised and been lost with time.

So, we are left with a poem, most likely written by a holy man, a priest or a monk, as they were the only ones educated at the time. A poem now named “An Ancient Poet’s View from Sliabh Fuaid”. A poem about the places this holy man can see from his view, of some we still know the names, but some also lost with time.

The questions. Where actually is the poet? What are the places in his view? What does it all mean? Plus, why towards the end of the poem, does he seem to change the name to "Sliab Fuait"?

For many years people have tried to identify Sliabh Fuaid and Sliab Fuait. So where are they and what are the names of so many places mentioned in this this poem, that have been lost?

You can read both papers at the links 1932 Paper and 1933 Paper (I have also downloaded them as photos and you can open and read at The Papers Section). I recommend you read and digest both before going any further, as that will add to your experience on this journey. 

As this is local to me, I thought I'd give it a go and see what I find. This website tells how I went about it and gives my conclusions. I'm not saying if my conclusion are correct, I'll let others decide, I just hope you enjoy the journey.

The poem itself is below.

In view to my d'lighted gaze.

At Ard Asse round about,

the Grave of Nemed’s Wife – a feat of daring –

the Balance of the Son of Balor’s Daughter.

The Port to which the Lugair brought (their) ship

in Deiscert Maige of the single ridge;

the Swim of the mighty Boar after the hour of terce,

it is near and eke in view. In view.

Loch Echtra, glorious Loch n-Echach,

Sliab Breg, Sliab Bairche ever bright,

the Stone of the Seat of Congal of the heads,

the lofty and lordly Sliab Uillenn.

Sliabh Slanga, lovely Sliab Cuilinn,

Sliab Modurin in the Mugdorn country,

Sliab Cairthinn of famous Ane,

deepsoiled Sliab Findar of shrill breezes.

The Mountains of Ulaid on the north

in the territory of strong Araide,

Sliab Mis of the precincts, a scanty bulk,

fair Sliab Callan of vaunted deeds.

The Mountains of Connachta on the side, Sliab Tua,

Sliab Cairn, Sliab Betha, ever fresh,

Sliab Cairthinn, Sliab Bethech of the peaks,

the Mountains of the Galing, scant in height.

Cenel n-Eogain, the territory of Ulaid,

the Men of Brega, the brave true stock,

the territory of the Collas, no path of right,

on every side, it is in view. In view.

Make your worthy and welcome inquiry

why Sliab Fuait has its name,

since it has happened me to be seated here,

that you may learn its history.

Fuat, son of Bregon, fortunate in his doings,

it was the tribune’s journey over the lands (?),

a warrior who was not solitary in his ships,

chief of the victorious descendants of Bregonn.

He it was who arrived alone

In search of the land of Ireland;

a noble and notable journey had brought him

to the Island of Truth.

He brought away from the middle of the island

Over the strong-crested waves a sod

and planted it (at the end of) a happy voyage

here in the middle of Sliab Fuait.

When truth was told

the sod remained at its right guise,

but if one at any time spoke falsehood

it turned its underside uppermost.

Upon that sod, with no weak guidance

for the keeping of the truth,

Long afterwards – a famous (?) step – lay down

Patrick's excelling nag.

Here it is, that bright thing of price,

the little sod from the Land of Promise

In glorious victorious sanctuary of power,

To you, though not manifestly, it is visible.

I read both papers and I read the poem a few times before I started. As a matter of fact, this appeared to be a daunting task. However, in the first paper Prof. MacNeill does give some guidance and this proved really helpful. He already knew some of the names of places referred to, and has given suggestions for some of the others. He also seemed to believe Sliabh Fuaid is in fact Carrigatuke Viewpoint and he provides a few extra pointers.

The CLAHS Team then seem to have put in a lot of work to find Sliabh Fuaid. They looked at three possible places:  Carrigatuke, Poel Hill (aka Deadman’s Hill) and Mullyash (south of Tullynawood Lake). They soon excluded Poel Hill and Mullyash and concentrated on Carrigatuke. However, a year later they produce the second paper. Again, they tried to work out the position of the poet (Sliabh Fuaid). This second paper starts by stating:

“Although Sliabh Fuaid was the best-known landmark in Pre-Christian Ireland, its identification has proved a difficult problem for modern historians and antiquarians. The similarity of such names as Fuaid, Fues, Foy, Fidh, and Feadan has been a snare for many writers; while others have been content to follow Standish O’Grady in his rather stupid assumption of the identity of Sliabh Fuaid with Slieve Gullion”.

The later go on to state:

“It is over a quarter of a century since we first copied this poem from Facsimile of the Book of Leinster. Helped considerably by the advice of others, we gradually came to the conclusion that it really contained two poems, dealing with two distinct mountain peaks not far distant from each other.”

They went on to give separate names to what they now thought were two poems within this poem, “Dinnshenchus of Ard Aisse” and “Dinnshenchus of Sliabh Fuaid”. However, this time they did come to lots of conclusions and seemed to have attained a huge knowledge of the geography and archaeology of the Keady, Darkley, Derrynoose, Madden, Carnagh and Tassagh. Yet, they still weren’t sure of the exact position of Sliabh Fuaid, but they ruled out the districts of Carrigatuke, the Armagh Breague and Deadman’s Hill.

They concluded:

1.    “The megalithic remains at Aughnagurgan, overlooking Tullynawood Lake mark the “place of the sods” – where Fuad planted the sod, where Cinn Berraide died, and where Patrick’s nag lay down” (they even claimed it was on the farm belonging to Robert Hughes – just behind the dwelling house).

2.    “The road from Emhain Macha by Sliabh Fuait, lay roughly along the old road from Navan to Tassagh Bridge, whence it followed a modern road through Aughnagurgan to the edge of Tullynawood Lake (Lough Eachtrainn). At the south end of the lake (where the Fertas may still be traced) the road divided – one branch to the east and the other to the west of Mullyash Mountain…” They even drew maps to show the road and its position compared to some of the places mentioned.

3.    "Sliabh Mondurin is Mullyash Mountain."

Now reading the second paper almost blew my mind – I hope you can partly see why. They seem to had put so much research into this and had gone off on tangents all over the place. If you read the whole paper, you’ll see what I mean. They had obviously got hold of every document and previous piece of research they could find, relating to this issue. From this and what looks like a lot of work on the ground, they reached the three conclusions above. Now, I had no way of knowing if these conclusions were accurate, so I had to accept them at face value.

I decided to look at all the options and add an extra one – Aughnagurgan Mountain, overlooking Tullynawood Lake. It had taken me half a day to get to this point.

Luckily, for me, technology has advanced and we now have the Internet which contains many useful tools. One such tool is a website named MapMyWalk, which I have been using for around 20 years now. On this you can draw a line between two points. It tells you the distance between them, but more usefully, it has an elevation function where you can calculate if you can see one from the other.

For reasons I only know myself, I started to look at all of the points mentioned in the poem which had been identified and listed by Prof. MacNeill. He knew he was correct on some, had ideas on others and unable to identify the rest. I plotted all the correct ones and the suggested ones on a Google Map. I also added the peaks of Carrigatuke, Deadman’s Hill, Mullyash Mountain and the Darkley Forest Ridge as I assumed, from the information in both papers, one of these must be Sliabh Fuaid. In this way I could go back and forward between the Google Map and MapMyWalk to work out what could be seen from where.

It was only a few hours before I started to rule each of the four peaks from the list. It meant I was none the wiser and was back to square one, but now with what seemed no option left on the table.

However, I did decide to ignore the second paper and just concentrate on the first. I did this because I believed it maybe better to trust Prof. MacNeill’s data than that of the CLAHS Team. Also, when I read the second paper it felt like the CLAHS Team had been trying to solve this problem for so long, that they had become tired of it and just wanted to reach a conclusion – I don’t blame them.

I decided to apply a mathematical approach, by taking the first verse of the poem (first 28 lines), numbering each of them and treating them as a separate identity. Though with some of the lines, as well as treating them as a single identity, I would also have to treat them as a dual identity because some had two places mention within them.

To read what happened next, see "Verse 1".