The gesture looks almost casual, the kind of small human detail that can stop a visitor mid-step. What makes this effigy quietly remarkable is not its grandeur but its legibility: unlike most medieval tomb figures, whose identities dissolve into centuries of silence, this one can be named with reasonable confidence.

The man in the stone is almost certainly Conor O'Brien, King of Thomond, who was killed in 1268 by his own cousin at the battle of Suidane. An annalistic account records that his body was honourably interred at Corcomroe and that the monks raised a grand marble figure to his memory. Conor had ruled Thomond for 26 years, though chroniclers note that in his later reign he was filled with despondency and no longer cared to play the king. There is a particular irony in the fact that he was buried at Corcomroe at all: the abbey had been founded by his grandfather, some 74 years before his death, making the monastery a family institution of a very specific and dynastic kind. The effigy fits its niche as though carved for it, which is itself a point in favour of identification. Art historian John Hunt noted that the figure was copied from the effigy of Felim O'Conor, who died in 1265, at Roscommon, though the Roscommon original has considerably more fluency and poise. The Corcomroe mason worked with ambition but limited experience in figure sculpture; the mantle-cord gesture, used with real finesse by French sculptors of the same century, comes across here as earnest imitation rather than accomplished technique. The rough finish of the face suggests the stone was originally covered in gesso and polychrome paint, the standard practice of the period, which would have softened the carving's raw edges considerably. The head sustained damage around 1890, and the right hand was mutilated in the early 1940s, losses that are visible but have not undone the effigy's overall composure.