Alongside the multicoloured rags that are the traditional currency of such sites, visitors have also contributed soft-drink tins and bottles, airline boarding card stubs, supermarket receipts, and at least one article of ladies' underclothing.

The tree stands over St Kevin's Holy Well, and its presence there is consistent with a very old practice. Clootie trees, as they are sometimes known, are a feature of holy well sites across Ireland and the wider Celtic world; the idea is that a rag or personal object tied to a branch carries a petition or an ailment away with it, particularly as the material weathers and decays. St Kevin himself is one of the great figures of early Irish Christianity, the sixth-century founder of the monastic settlement at Glendalough just a short distance away, and the Wicklow landscape holds numerous sites connected to his name and cult. The well at Derrybawn is one of them, and the decorated tree above it suggests that whatever formal religious observance has ebbed and flowed over the centuries, the impulse to leave something behind at a charged place has not.