Phonetic Truth
Untold times I have heard someone say that there was a tale handed down in a family that they had lived in some place in Ireland, and it was written down. But when the interested researcher had looked it up, they didn't find it. Then they gave it up as a false lead.
Don't stop there!
The truth is that most of these locations were auditory heritage. They were told by one older person to a young person. And if the young person lived in North America, Australia or England, they would think it a literal name, and write it down that way.
The reality is that the place name or names are more likely to have been spelled incorrectly. Or the name could be a "double-name" demarcating an area. Don't give up but instead look at modern Ordnance Survey maps to find the place.
In our family the classic tale was that the general area for the Walshes and Tanners was "Canaan-Airdes". No one could find it. Then one night at 2am it came to me it WAS two place names. I grabbed a 1:125,000 map of Co. Longford, and found the solution within five minutes - it was Kenagh AND Ards.
Play with the words, and imagine what they might have been originally when spoken with an Irish accent. You MUST have at least the modern 1:50,000 maps handy. Google Earath is helpful, but not for this function.
The other part of a possible solution is that the website SEAN RUAD, or John of the Red Hair, allows one to put in the first part or the last part of a name of a townland or a parish for anywhere in Ireland. And the name provided by your ancestor could have been either.
Go for the audio clue and work it to death, and nine times out of ten there will be a solution. Sometimes the actual spelling, whether Victorian age or modern day, will surprise one.