That kind of first-person inscription, speaking directly from the stone itself, is unusual enough to give a moment's pause. The text translates as: 'Eugene McDonnell, Vicar of this district, had me erected 1591.' The pillar is square in cross-section, about 85 centimetres wide, and finished with a triangular stone cap, giving it a form somewhere between a boundary marker and a small monument.

The date, 1591, places this squarely in the late Elizabethan period, a time of considerable turbulence across Connacht, when the established structures of the Catholic church were under pressure and local clerical figures occupied an ambiguous position. That a vicar of the district commissioned and inscribed such a visible, permanent marker at that particular moment is quietly telling. The pillar stands immediately to the west of a holy well, those small, often ancient freshwater sources that accumulated religious significance over centuries and were frequently associated with early Christian sites. A church and graveyard lie about 80 metres to the west-south-west, suggesting this small cluster of monuments formed a coherent sacred landscape. The Ordnance Survey recorded the pillar in 1836, and the local historian Kilgannon noted it again in 1926, so it has attracted at least occasional attention across the years, though it remains little discussed.

The monument sits at the roadside, which makes it straightforward to approach and examine. The Latin inscription is on the upper portion of the south face, so the light matters; overcast days tend to make carved relief lettering more legible than bright sunshine, which can wash out shallow cuts in pale limestone.