Each one is roughly rectangular, flat-topped, and set with its long axis running west to east, parallel with the current rather than across it, so the river slides alongside each footfall rather than pushing against it. At their most prominent they rise only about twenty centimetres above the waterline, and the river here is around ten metres wide where it runs slow and shallow enough to cross. The whole arrangement is modest almost to the point of invisibility, yet it was placed with obvious intention.

That intention becomes clear once you know where the stones lead. Roughly 150 metres to the south-west lies a mass-rock, a site associated with a bullaun stone, the kind of bowl-shaped hollow worn or carved into a larger boulder that appears at many early Christian and later devotional sites across Ireland. During the Penal Laws, when Catholic worship was prohibited under English colonial legislation, Mass was celebrated in remote outdoor locations on stones like this, out of sight of authorities. The stepping stones across the Baurearagh are not decorative or incidental; they are the route. Someone arranged nine carefully selected slabs to make that crossing reliable, probably because the people using the path needed to arrive without wet feet, in all seasons, without drawing attention to themselves.