Its arms are not so much carved as suggested, little more than gentle undulations where the stone's edges shift inward, and a crude linear cross has been scratched into its east-northeast face. Nothing about it announces itself. Yet this understated object, one of two such stones placed in the same spot, is known locally as part of the 'Grave of Two Men in Emlagh Bog', and sits fewer than six metres from a holy well that Irish speakers have long called Tober-olla-Brenainn, the Well of St Brendan's Anointing.

The tradition attached to these stones was recorded by Delap in 1911, drawing on a local account that weaves the familiar figure of St Brendan of Clonfert into the landscape of what was once dense forest and is now open bog. According to the account, Brendan pulled his boat ashore and climbed a cliff by steps said to be still visible, then followed a mysterious guide inland into what would become Emlagh Bog. There he found two dying men who had never received baptism, not through any refusal but through sheer lack of opportunity. The guide vanished, and Brendan baptised the men and administered Extreme Unction, the last rites of the early Irish church, before they died. They were buried on the spot, and the two pillar-stones marking their graves were, the tradition insists, brought from some distance away, no local stone being thought sufficient for the purpose. The holy well beside them, from which Brendan drew the baptismal water, retained the memory of that moment in its name. The cross described here, standing 0.98 metres high and 0.55 metres wide, is one of the two stones still present at the site.

What is quietly arresting about this place is the layering of things that almost are. The arms of the cross are almost not there. The forest is almost entirely gone, replaced by bog. The two men buried here had almost not received the sacraments they sought. Even the mysterious guide who led Brendan to them disappears from the story without explanation. The stones themselves, modest and rough-worked, suit all of this well.