That name is more evocative than accurate. What they were recording were souterrains, dry-stone lined underground tunnels built during the early medieval period, typically used for food storage, refuge, or as escape routes in times of danger. The label stuck to the landscape long enough to appear on the first edition map, even as the structures themselves slipped into obscurity.

The two passages sit along the interior northern and southern sections of the cashel, a type of stone-walled enclosure common in early medieval Ireland and particularly numerous along the Iveragh peninsula. One of them is notable for extending beyond the cashel boundary itself, running outward to the south-east, which would have made it useful as a concealed exit point well outside the main enclosure wall. Their existence was noted by King in 1931, who recorded the site in print, and the detail was later incorporated into the archaeological survey of the Iveragh peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996.