These grounds, known in Irish as cilліní (singular cillín), were places set apart from consecrated churchyards, used for centuries to inter unbaptised infants and others who, under Catholic Church practice, were considered ineligible for burial in hallowed ground. They occupy an ambiguous, liminal position in Irish cultural memory, neither fully acknowledged nor entirely forgotten, often marked by little more than a scattering of small stones or a slight rise in a field.

The use of cilліní was widespread across Ireland from at least the medieval period and continued, in some areas, well into the twentieth century. The locations chosen were typically marginal spaces, old ringfort banks, shorelines, or the boundaries between townlands, places already understood to sit at the edge of the ordinary world. The Snaty site in Clare belongs to this broader tradition, rooted in a theological and social reality that shaped how communities grieved children who died before baptism. The grief was real; the burial, by necessity, was unofficial.