It is not much to look at in isolation: irregularly shaped, roughly a metre long and less than half a metre high. But press a hand into its upper surface and you find a shallow circular hollow, worn into the stone and perpetually filled by water dripping from the bank and bushes above. This is a bullaun stone, a type of ancient carved or naturally hollowed rock found across Ireland and frequently associated with sacred sites, healing rituals, and cursing traditions. The water that collects in the cup-shaped depression was, and in some cases still is, considered to carry particular power.

Writing in 1906, a researcher named Cooke observed that the stone had what he called "due superstition attached to it", with rags hung around it and prayers said there. The practice of tying rags or cloth to objects near holy wells and sacred stones is an old one in Ireland, a physical offering left in hope of cure or petition. This stone was not a standalone site but formed part of a structured devotional circuit. The "rounds" ritual involved beginning either at the bullaun or at a well known as Tobermurry, situated roughly 200 metres to the east, then proceeding clockwise around the remains of a possible church within a children's burial ground that lies between the two. Such burial grounds, sometimes called cillíní, were used for the interment of unbaptised infants and others excluded from consecrated ground, places that occupied an ambiguous position in both religious and folk tradition. According to records kept by the County Kerry Field Club, the rounds were performed after dark or before daylight, and only on two specific dates: the first of May and the first of August, both of which correspond to the old Gaelic festivals of Bealtaine and Lughnasa, marking the transitions into summer and harvest.