What makes it stranger still is the companion piece beside it: a smaller stone that pilgrims have used, repeatedly and over generations, to scratch the outline of that same cross into the surface, as though tracing it were itself the act of devotion. The wear involved in that repeated gesture is quietly remarkable.

The stone sits to the east of a path used for making the 'rounds', a traditional Irish devotional practice in which pilgrims circuit a sacred site in a clockwise direction while praying. Here, the circuit follows the edge of an adjacent lake that is regarded locally as a holy well. The practice, though it lapsed for a time, has been revived in recent years and now takes place annually on the 7th and 8th of July. The wider site carries considerable depth: the remains of a hermitage lie approximately four metres to the east of this stone, and a second cross-inscribed stone sits roughly ten metres further in the same direction, suggesting that this corner of Kerry was once a place of some sustained religious significance, likely associated with early Christian solitary or monastic life of the kind that left scattered traces across the Irish landscape.