Locally, these stones are believed to mark a children's burial ground, a type of site known in Irish as a cillín, where, for centuries, unbaptised infants and others excluded from consecrated ground were laid to rest quietly, outside the formal rites of the Church. The informality of the stones is characteristic; cilliní were rarely marked in any official or elaborate way, their locations passed on through local memory rather than inscription or monument.

What makes this particular site additionally layered is that it sits on or within an earlier earthwork, suggesting that the hollow itself may have carried significance long before any Christian-era burials took place. It was common throughout Ireland for marginal or liminal spaces, including prehistoric earthworks, to be repurposed in later centuries as burial grounds for those who fell outside the parish system. The combination of an older earthwork and a reputed children's burial ground at Pollaneyster places the site within a pattern found across the west of Ireland, where the landscape quietly accumulates meaning across long stretches of time, one use folding over another without either being fully erased.