The cairn is a penitential station, a place where devotional circuits known as "rounds" are walked in a set sequence, prayers offered at each turn. That this happens not in a church or a graveyard but at a prehistoric monument, on the exact date that once marked the Celtic festival of Bealtaine, the beginning of summer, gives the place a layered quality that repays attention.

The enclosure surrounding it is a cashel called Cathair Craobh Dearg, known locally as The City. A cashel is a ringfort built from dry-stone walling rather than an earthen bank, and this one is substantial enough to have its own informal place name. The penitential cairn sits in the northern half of the cashel, just north of a low mound, with traces of two possible hut sites lying to the east and northeast. The specific sequence of rounds performed here is documented in detail by Cronin, writing in 2001, suggesting a practice precise enough to have been handed down with some care. What is most striking is that the observance has not lapsed. Mass continues to be celebrated at the cairn on the first of May, so a pre-Christian seasonal marker, a medieval stone enclosure, and a Catholic liturgical rite have arrived together at the same date in the same place and, apparently, remain there.