Ailig also means a stone house. Thus we have the words Poll and lairig, or the pool of the Lairig river. In an old map this was spelled Ballynirk, which may be a corruption of Pullerick, or may mean the Baile or townland of the horns, being near Knocknaneirk. In cases where this word for cave is anglicized the 'v' sound is generally retained as in Ovens. Umhan in this case may represent the word for fright, the fort where someone got a fright from the good people, but a simpler explanation would be Rath and uain, the fort of the lamb.
Forest is the modern name.
This, along with Rathculleen, the rath of Cullen, the harper, were two of the forts of the royal residence of the Ui Eachach. It could here mean extensive or wide. This is a common place name, and those old whitethorn bushes had usually an unsavoury reputation as places where evil spirits made their home. Scanned, sorted alphabetically and published to HTML by Fr.