These small, informal plots were used for centuries to inter unbaptised infants, and sometimes others considered ineligible for burial in consecrated ground, including stillborn children, travellers, and those who died by suicide. Because Catholic doctrine long held that baptism was a prerequisite for entry to heaven, and therefore for burial in a parish churchyard, families turned instead to liminal places: old ringfort ditches, the edges of bogs, early medieval enclosures, or, as here, sites that carried their own quiet sense of apartness. The practice was widespread across Ireland, and cilliní survive in their hundreds, though they are frequently unmarked and easy to miss.

The Springlawn site belongs to this broader tradition, and its presence in Galway is not surprising given how deeply rooted the cillín custom was in Connacht. Many such sites cluster around pre-Norman ecclesiastical enclosures or earlier sacred ground, inheriting a residual sense of sanctity that made them acceptable, if unofficial, resting places. The grief attached to these sites was real but largely private; there were no formal funeral rites, and burials often took place at night or at dawn, carried out by the father or a small group of family members. Over time the locations were remembered within families and communities, passed on quietly, and only relatively recently have they begun to receive formal archaeological recognition.