They are not identical: the eastern stone is slightly taller, at 2.3 metres, while the western stone, a fraction shorter at 2.15 metres, carries something the other does not. Scratched into its surface are indeterminate scribblings and what appears to be the date 1824, the kind of informal inscription that raises more questions than it answers. Was it a surveyor marking territory, a passing visitor leaving their trace, or something else entirely? The stone itself is older than any such annotation by several thousand years, and its surface also bears glacial striations, grooves scored into the rock by moving ice during the last glaciation, a reminder that the landscape around Killarney was shaped by forces entirely indifferent to human prehistory.

Paired standing stones of this kind are found across Munster and are generally attributed to the Bronze Age, though pinning down precise dates remains difficult. The east-west alignment here may be deliberate, possibly referencing the movement of the sun along the horizon, though certainty on that point has eluded researchers. What is more certain is the company these stones keep. Roughly fourteen metres to the north lies an embanked stone circle, a type of monument in which a ring of upright stones is set within or against a low earthen or stone bank, and the proximity of the two sites suggests this corner of Lissyviggeen was a place of some significance in the prehistoric landscape. The site was catalogued by Ó Nualláin in 1988, as part of broader survey work on standing stone pairs across Ireland.