That ring appears on one other effigy in the same ruin, and nowhere else in Ireland. A comparable figure at Kirkstead in Lincolnshire shares the feature, but whether the two are connected remains unresolved. It is the kind of small, stubborn detail that keeps scholars returning to an otherwise quiet field in Co. Limerick.

The church was once a commandery of the Knights Hospitaller, the military-religious order that ran the Hospital of Aney, also known as the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, founded in 1215. The effigy is believed to represent Geoffrey de Marisco, who founded the institution, and who according to a genealogical memoir published in 1817 died in 1245 or 1246. That same publication depicted the slab resting atop a box-tomb, though the art historian John Hunt, writing in 1974, thought the illustration might be imaginary rather than a faithful record of what the tomb once looked like. Hunt's detailed analysis of the armour places the carving somewhere between 1230 and 1260, noting that the style of the great helm, a flat-topped cylindrical form with slit visors outlined by a decorative band, matches examples at Kirkstead, Furness Abbey, Walkerne, and Wells, and appears slightly earlier in type than the well-known effigy at Jerpoint Abbey in Co. Kilkenny. The curious throat ring may represent the junction of the hauberk, a coat of chain mail, and the coif, the mail hood that protected the head and neck, though the two were usually made as a single garment, which is part of what makes the ring so puzzling. Hunt also raised the possibility that it served as a family badge of the de Mariscos, or as an emblem associated with the Hospitaller order itself.

The effigy survives within the ruins of the church at Barrysfarm, and photographs taken by Edwin Rae sometime between the 1930s and 1970s show it in two different positions within the ruin, lying flat against a low wall in one image and standing upright in the north-east angle in another, suggesting the slab has been moved at least once in living memory. A second tomb in the same ruin shows a knight alongside a wife, which led Hunt to conclude that both figures are likely to represent lay benefactors of the order rather than members of it. Anyone visiting should look carefully at the wavy-line decoration carved across the surface of the limestone, which represents the links of the mail, and note the carved foliations beneath the feet, a small flourish of craftsmanship that has survived several centuries in the open air.