What gave it significance was what you added to it: earth taken from the grave of a local priest, Fr John O'Callaghan, buried in the graveyard immediately to the south. The two were combined into a mixture that was either swallowed, for internal complaints, or rubbed onto the body for ailments of the skin or limbs. It is an unusual conflation of the two most common strands of Irish folk healing, the holy well and the venerated grave, drawn together into a single ritual practice.

The custom was recorded by Hartnett in 1939 and follows a pattern well-attested in Irish devotional life, where a pattern or round involved visiting a site on prescribed days in a set sequence. Here, the cycle required three visits: a Sunday, followed by a Friday, followed by another Sunday. Those who completed the rounds would incise a small cross into Fr O'Callaghan's tombstone, a physical mark left by the act of devotion rather than anything more elaborate. Over time, the cumulative effect of many such visits would have left a tombstone quietly covered in cut crosses, each one a record of someone who came hoping for relief. The well itself is a spring well, the most common type associated with Irish holy wells, where water issues naturally from the ground and was understood to carry curative or sacred properties.