The church is known in Irish as Cill Mhic Deá, meaning the Church of the Son of Daigh, and is associated with St Erc, a figure whose name surfaces repeatedly across the folklore of this corner of north Kerry. The walls survive to no more than about two metres, both gables are featureless, and a narrow slit window in the south wall has been blocked up. What makes the place quietly remarkable, though, is not the architecture but a square stone mound standing about three metres from the east gable, on top of which sits a sculpted rock bearing a red-painted cross. Cut into the top of this rock is a small alcove, designed to hold a pair of round smooth stones known locally as bauleys. These two amulets, according to tradition, were blessed by St Erc himself and are believed to cure all evils and ills. The ritual involves water drawn from a nearby holy well, placed in a vessel with the baul­ey, and then drunk in honour of the saint.

The graveyard and the church belong, in tradition and in practice, almost entirely to a single family. The Corridan family hold exclusive burial rights here, and one of the two bauleys remains in their keeping. The other lies somewhere in the graveyard. Folklore collected from local schools in the late 1930s, as part of a nationwide scheme to record oral tradition, describes lights seen at the church before the death of any Corridan, whether that death occurs at home or abroad; a keening sound, the caoine, is said to accompany it. The same accounts identify a mound outside the churchyard as the burial place of Bishop Erc himself, with a long upright stone and a round stone resting on top. The church's full historical context reaches further still: by 1841, Ordnance Survey notes recorded that Cill Mhic Deá stood on the south side of Kerry Head, while roughly two and a half miles away on the north side stood the church of his sister, Saint Daithlionn, whose holy well, Tobar na Súl, the Well of the Eyes, was visited on Saturdays by those suffering from sore eyes. The two siblings, it was said, each founded a church on opposite flanks of the headland.

The folklore accounts also place Bishop Erc at the centre of a remarkable story: during a visit to a monastery near this site, a light was seen across the bay in the direction of Mount Brandon. Erc, consulting with the monks, declared that a great saint had been born that night, and they set out the following morning to find and baptise the child, who was none other than St Brendan. A ruined monastery is said to stand a few hundred yards east of the church, now reduced to a grass-covered mound. The sculptured rock with its alcove and faintly visible red cross remains the most tangible object in this layered landscape, and the baul­ey tradition, with water, stone, and saint bound together in a single act of healing, is among the more specific and persistent ritual survivals recorded anywhere along the Kerry coast.