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LIFE OF CHARLES 1IALIDAY. 11
During the Ordnance Survey of Ireland the remains of Tara
were laid down according to accurate measurement on a map.
While the Royal Engineers were employed in the field, Dr.
Petrie and Dr. O'Donovan, who were then attached to the
Survey, made a careful search in all ancient manuscripts for
such evidence as might tend to identify or illustrate the
existing vestiges of Tara.
The result proved that descriptions previously regarded as
mere bardic fictions were perfectly accurate.
In the early manuscripts referred to by Mr. Haliday SHgh
concerning the five great roads, leading
from different
provinces, or petty kingdoms, to the seat of supreme
royalty at Tara, the 'Slighe' or road called 'the Sligh
Cualann,' was the one traced with the greatest apparent
certainty by the Ordnance Survey. It led by way of Ratoath
and Dublin, into Cualann, a district extending from Dai-
key southwards and westwards, part of which, including
Powerscourt, is designated in Anglo-Norman records as
Fercullen, or the territory of the men of Cualann. This road
must have crossed the Liffey and that it did so near Dublin
is confirmed by the fact that the passage across the river there
an Arabian author, vessels sailed see the from the Nile to the Red Sea. Thebaid
solitary hermits in the
and the "granaries of
But in A.D. 767 a revolt occurred Joseph," and the tracks of
at Mecca and Medina, and it was Pharaoh's chariots in the Red Sea.
closed again to hinder the rebels In their travels, therefore, as
from getting supplies from Egypt. Mr. Haliday suggests, they must
There is no evidence that it was have peen temples and bridges, and
ever opened" again, and Monsieur the masterpieces of Roman archi-
Letronne shows how possible it tects.
was for these Irish monks to have Thus the Irish had the know-
travelled down it between A.D. 762 ledge and power
to erect a
and 705. structure for crossing the Liffey if
But Fidelis was not the only there was any road requiring it at
travelled Irish ecclesiastic. It was this point, and that there was such
a common thing for pilgrims from a road is curiously proved both by
the latter end of the fourth century, record, and the still existing re-
savs Letronne, to visit Jerusalem, mains of this road,
and to take Egypt in their way, to
d 2