This is a cillín, a type of informal burial ground used across Ireland for centuries to inter unbaptised infants and others excluded from consecrated ground. What makes this particular example quietly arresting is its location: it sits within the interior and along the bank of an earthwork far older than any Christian burial custom, a rath.

A rath, sometimes called a ringfort, is a circular enclosure typically built during the early medieval period, defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches. They were the farmsteads of early Irish society, and many were later regarded in folklore as the dwelling places of the otherworld, which gave them a kind of protective aura across the centuries. The surviving southern portion of the rath at Gorteenanillaun provided the setting, whether by accident or intention, for this children's burial ground. Immediately to the north lies a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber associated with the original rath, often used for storage or refuge. The proximity of the cillín to both the ancient earthwork and its subterranean chamber creates a layering of uses across time that is characteristic of how Irish communities quietly reappropriated older structures for new purposes, long after the original meaning had faded.