The original tree is gone, felled in 1958, but the name it carried for centuries points to a tradition that long predates any map or survey. On the 1904 Ordnance Survey six-inch edition it appears simply as "The Bell Tree", a label that almost certainly represents an anglicisation of the Irish word "bile", meaning a sacred or holy tree. These were trees regarded in early Irish tradition as places of assembly, inauguration, and ritual significance, often associated with a nearby fort or settlement. The pronunciation drifted further still: by the mid-twentieth century, local people were calling it the "bella tree", which is how a local writer described it in 1949, though by then he was already noting its decay.

By the time that writer put pen to paper, the tree had been in gradual decline for some years, but it retained enough presence to serve as a recognised gathering place in the community. The Ordnance Survey letters of 1840 give a sense of what it had once been: an ash, then still in full growth, measuring eighteen feet and six inches in circumference at the base, standing roughly one hundred paces to the east of the Rath Ronain ringfort. That is a substantial girth for any tree, and it suggests a specimen of considerable age even in 1840. Ash trees carry particular weight in Irish folk tradition, associated with healing, boundary-marking, and protection, which makes the likely identification as a bile all the more fitting. Whatever ceremonies or customs the tree had once witnessed had largely faded by the twentieth century, though its role as an informal meeting place suggests some residual sense of the site's importance. After it was felled in 1958, a young ash was planted in its place, and the location now holds a variety of young trees, none of which carries any visible trace of what stood there before.