It is sitting upright, as it happens, having tumbled roughly four metres from the bank into the water below, and that detail alone gives this site a slightly absurd quality that most ancient stones manage to avoid.

A bullaun stone is a boulder, usually of some size, into which one or more cup-shaped depressions have been deliberately ground. These hollows, which often held rainwater and were associated in folklore with healing or cursing, appear across Ireland and are generally thought to date from the early medieval period, though the tradition is difficult to pin down precisely. The Cloghinch example was noted by Raftery in 1967, when only the flat upper surface of the stone was visible above the ground, the circular depression measuring roughly 0.3 metres across and 0.15 metres deep, set close to one edge of the boulder. The boulder itself, once fully exposed, proved to be a substantial mass of stone, nearly a metre in each dimension. When the surrounding field was reclaimed, the boulder was lifted and moved to the riverbank to the north, at which point it fell in. What makes the site more than a curiosity of agricultural misfortune is that a cross-inscribed stone was found lying adjacent to the bullaun stone, suggesting the two objects may have formed part of a small early Christian assemblage, possibly marking a place of local religious significance within the glen.