The object in question is associated with the lake's crannog, one of those artificial or partly artificial islands built from timber, stone, and brushwood that were used as defended dwelling places from the Bronze Age through to the early modern period. Local tradition holds that a sculpture stands or once stood on this island, but when a field survey was carried out on the site, nothing was found.

The gap between what local memory preserves and what a field survey can actually locate is not unusual in Irish archaeology. Oral tradition frequently records the presence of objects, stones with markings, figures, or carvings, that have since been removed, submerged, overgrown, or simply lost to the slow disorder of an unmanaged island. Whether the sculpture ever existed in the form described, whether it was moved at some point, or whether it represents a conflation with something else entirely, none of that can be answered from what is currently known. The crannog itself is recorded, the tradition is recorded, and the absence confirmed by fieldwork is recorded. The sculpture, if there is one, remains unaccounted for.