The cause, according to local tradition, was the impiety of whoever owned the land at the time. It is the kind of folklore that recurs across Ireland, where sacred sites are understood to have their own agency, withdrawing from those who fail to honour them properly.

What makes Carrickatober particularly interesting is the physical marker that tradition associates with the original site. A rock on the hill bears two shallow depressions, said to be the imprints left by St Patrick's knees, as though he knelt there. This type of impression, sometimes called a bullaun or a saint's hollow depending on context, appears at numerous early Christian sites across Ireland, where natural or worn features in stone became woven into the memory of a holy figure's presence. Here, the rock is thought to indicate where the burial ground once stood before its legendary migration. The record of this tradition was noted by Davies in 1948, suggesting it was still in circulation in the mid-twentieth century, though the site itself offers little to the eye at ground level.

The burial ground is not visible from the surface today, and the holy well's current location on the far side of the hill is not documented in any surviving detail. What remains is essentially the rock, the story, and the implication that something significant once happened here, even if the physical evidence has long since disappeared into the hillside.