The ritual act of rotation was the mechanism, and the inscription on the stone was apparently part of its perceived power. What the inscription actually said, nobody now knows.

By the time the Ordnance Survey Letters were compiled in 1838, the stone's story had already become one of intervention and dispersal. At some point before that, someone had broken the stone deliberately, presumably to put an end to its use. It was then reassembled, which suggests either that the attempt failed to discourage people or that the stone retained enough significance to be worth putting back together. In the early 1800s, a local priest removed it from the graveyard entirely and reportedly brought it to a new Roman Catholic chapel in Ballina. Whether it was meant to be preserved, repurposed, or simply taken out of circulation is not recorded. A fragment, according to tradition, was left behind in the graveyard. The whereabouts of both the main stone and the surviving fragment are now unknown.

The cursing stone tradition in Ireland typically involved flat or rounded stones, sometimes kept in specific locations associated with saints or ancient sites, and the act of turning them was understood to direct harm towards a named person. What made the Kilcummin stone unusual was its inscription, a detail that set it apart from the more common uninscribed examples and that presumably added to its local authority. That inscription has never been recorded in any surviving description, which means whatever it contained, whether early medieval script, a name, or something else entirely, is now lost along with the stone itself.