Locals call it the Danish King's stone, and the name alone raises questions. It is a modest thing by any objective measure, roughly 1.4 metres tall with a near-square cross section, but modest standing stones often carry the heaviest freight of memory.

The stone is thought to be possibly associated with the Battle of Glen Mama, fought in 999 AD, in which Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill and Brian Boru combined forces to inflict a decisive defeat on the Leinster kings and their Norse allies from Dublin. The "Danish King" of the local name almost certainly refers to the Norse-Irish political world of that period, when Viking settlers in Dublin had become deeply enmeshed in Irish dynastic conflict. Whether the stone marked a burial, a boundary, or simply a prominent feature that attracted a story after the fact, nobody now knows. The granite itself bears notches and scars along its north-western angle, the characteristic marks left by stone-splitting, suggesting the pillar may have been worked at some point or that an attempt was made to break it apart, perhaps for reuse as building material at some later date.

Standing stones of this kind are among the most difficult prehistoric monuments to date or interpret. They could be Bronze Age markers, early medieval boundary posts, or memorial stones raised after a significant event. The association with Glen Mama may be entirely folk memory attaching itself to a much older object, or it may preserve a genuine local tradition. The stone sits in pasture on undulating ground, the kind of terrain where such monuments are easily walked past without a second glance, which perhaps explains why this one has remained largely unnoticed outside the immediate locality.