mounds that mark the last resting place of their dead, there is little
left, either of storied arch or cloistered aisle to tell of the extent
of the edifices, or of the zeal and labours of the pious souls who dwelt
within them.

The Dominican Convent of Saint Brigid, at Longford, was one of the most
modern of the religious foundations of Ardagh, having been founded by
one of the O'Ferralls in 1400. A sketch of its history will, however,
serve as a first contribution towards the early history of that ancient
church, and may perhaps prove interesting to the reader, as from local
circumstances it has been to us.

O'Heyne tells us, "This convent was built for the Dominicans in 1400, by
O'Ferrall, a very illustrious, ancient, and, for those times, powerful
dynast of Annaly". Harris, in his edition of _Sir James Ware's
Antiquities_, distinctly names Cornelius O'Ferrall, the Dominican Bishop
of Ardagh, as the founder. De Burgo, in his _Hibernia Dominicana_, from
which most of our information is taken, shows that in the year 1400, in
which the Convent of Saint Brigid was founded, Adam Lyons, a Dominican
Friar, succeeded Gilbert MacBrady in the See of Ardagh; that Adam Lyons
died in 1416, and was succeeded by Cornelius O'Ferrall, who was
consecrated in February, 1418, when the Convent of Saint Brigid had been
built and inhabited nearly eighteen years. Hence, it is very clear, that
if Cornelius O'Ferrall was the founder, it must have been before his
consecration as bishop, and very probably before his admission to
Religion as a Dominican. It is not improbable that, like others of his
name, he was dynast of Annaly before he assumed the mitre of Ardagh, and
that having in his boyhood been a pupil of the Dominicans, as we learn
from the Bull of his consecration, he had founded this convent for them
long before he thought of joining the order himself.

Cornelius O'Ferrall died, "celebrated for his liberality to the poor",
as Ware tells us, for which he was popularly known by the name
"_Eleemosynarius_", or the "_Almsgiver_", and he was buried in the Abbey
of Saint Brigid in 1424. The family of the O'Ferralls made repeated and
ample grants to the convent, and, after the example of Bishop Cornelius,
made the abbey their family burial place.

The church attached to the convent stood on the site now occupied by the
Protestant parochial church of Longford, on the north side of the river
Camlin. From it a raised causeway or road led t