Áed Ua Forréid

Áed Ua Forréid was Bishop of Armagh from 1032 to 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".