They were brought there because someone, at some point, decided they were too dangerous to leave where they were. These are cursing stones, originally from the early medieval monastic island of Inishmurray, off the coast of County Sligo, and their relocation from that remote Atlantic site to a city museum case is itself a quietly telling detail about how seriously such objects were once regarded.

Inishmurray was an inhabited island with a working monastic settlement, and among its most distinctive features were a collection of rounded, inscribed stones known locally as the Clocha Breaca, or Speckled Stones. Cursing stones, broadly speaking, are objects used in ritualised acts of imprecation: a person with a grievance would turn the stones in a particular direction, against the sun rather than with it, while naming the individual they wished ill upon. The ritual at Inishmurray was documented in some detail, and the stones themselves carried a reputation that outlasted the island's permanent population, who were evacuated to the mainland in 1948. Exactly when the five stones now in Dublin were removed from the island is not specified in the archaeological record compiled by Paul Walsh and uploaded in October 2013, but their current location is logged formally as Dublin South City. The fullest account of the stones and their associated rituals appears in J. O'Sullivan and T. Ó Carragáin's Inishmurray: Monks and pilgrims in an Atlantic landscape, published by Collins Press in 2008, which covers the subject across several detailed sections.

The stones are held by the National Museum of Ireland, though visitors should be aware that not all items in a national collection are on permanent public display. It would be worth contacting the museum directly before visiting with the specific intention of seeing them. For those also interested in the original context, the monastic site on Inishmurray itself remains accessible by boat from the Sligo coast during summer months, and the bulk of the Clocha Breaca remain there in situ. The two experiences, the island and the museum, complement each other in ways that a single visit to either alone cannot fully supply.