The inscription commemorates Neptune Blood, his wife Isabella, who died in 1683 aged just thirteen, and their six children: Elizabeth, John, Debora, Theodosia, William, and Lepedus Neptunus. All the children died between 1688 and 1700, their ages ranging from five to sixteen. The translated epitaph is quietly devastating in its restraint: "Man as the flower groweth up and passes away as a shadow, thus silently have passed even the dear pledges of love to parents whose sorrowful hearts are tortured with grief."

Neptune Blood was the son of the Reverend Neptune, who held the position of Dean of Finebor, a title believed to refer to the diocese of Kilfenora. The name Neptune, carried across two generations of the family and given again to a son, Lepedus Neptunus, is striking, though its origins are not recorded here. The cathedral itself is a medieval structure with a long and complicated history, and the Blood memorial sits within the chancel as a relatively late addition to a building that had already seen centuries of use. The plaque was noted by Barry as early as 1892, suggesting it was already recognised as a document worth preserving, even if the family it commemorates had long since ceased to be known locally. What the monument does, with its careful listing of names and ages, is refuse to let those children dissolve entirely into the statistical background of late seventeenth-century mortality.