On its own, a scrap of disused lane is unremarkable. What makes this one worth a second look is its name, or rather its names, and the strange mythology of cattle and saints that seems to have clung to it for centuries.

Writing in 1858, Fitzgerald identified the trackway as part of a road known as Bohur-na-bo-ruadh, the road of the Red Cow, and traced its line from Cloyne westward through Castlemary and on to Rathcoursey, where travellers would have crossed the estuary to Ballyvodock and continued north to Glanmire, presumably joining the main road into Cork city. A separate but related tradition, noted by Coleman in 1894, attached a different name to a nearby route: Bothar na Naomh, the Road of the Saints, which crossed onto Great Island at East Ferry. The scholar Power, writing in 1923, argued that this saints' road would have offered the most direct route between Cloyne and the early monastic school associated with Saint Finbarr at Cork. Whether both names describe different portions of the same ancient corridor or two distinct but overlapping routes is not entirely clear, but the convergence of bovine folklore and early Christian association along the same general line is striking. Fitzgerald also recorded something that no longer exists: a large stone monument near Castlemary which he called Leava-na-bo fuine, the Sepulchre of the White Cow. It was demolished by the labourers who built the demesne wall, leaving only the name behind.