Áed Ua Forréid

Áed Ua Forréid was Bishop of Armagh from 1032-1056. He was from the Cenél Tigernaig branch of the northern Uí Néill kin-group of Cenél nÉogain.^[1] The see was not elevated to an archbishopric until 1106, well after his death.

A praise-poem in his honour, written sometime after his election and before 1042, exists in a single copy transcribed in 1628 by Mícheál Ó Cléirigh (Dublin, Royal Irish Academy MS B.IV.2 (1080), fol. 142^r).^[2]

He may have resigned the bishopric when he became fer léigind (i.e. Lector) in 1049. In the Annals of Ulster, which derive from an Armagh chronicle,^[3] in their prose notice of his death at 75 years of age, he is only "eminent lector of Armagh" (ard-fer leiginn Aird Macha).^[4] However, a verse cited in the same entry also describes him as "gentle bishop".

Notes

1. Murphy: Poem in Praise, p.156.
2. Murphy (ed. and trans.): Poem in Praise
3. Evans, Present and the Past, pp.17–44
4. Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill (ed. and trans.): The Annals of Ulster, s.a. (pp.492–493)

References

• Evans, Nicholas J., The Present and the Past in Medieval Irish Chronicles, Studies in Celtic History 27, Woodbridge: Boydell
• Murphy, Gerard (1944), "A Poem in Praise of Áodh Úa Foirréidh, Bishop of Armagh (1032‒1056)", in O'Brien, Sylvester, Measgra i gCuimhne Mhichil Uí Chléirigh, Dublin: Assisi Press, pp. 140–164
• Mac Airt, Seán; Mac Niocaill, Gearóid (1983), The Annals of Ulster, Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies