Where the average funerary monument settles for dates and virtues, this one, dated 1685, spells out the full biological trajectory: after the man, a worm; after the worm, foul smell and horror. The Latin text carved in incised Roman capitals does not spare the reader, and it does not pretend that fine form or youthful ardour count for much in the end.

The monument was commissioned by Donald MacDonagh and his wife Maria O'Conor, who had it made for themselves, their children, and their descendants on both sides of the family. The Latin dedication closes with the phrase "Momento Mori", remember death, which was a conventional enough formula for the period, but the longer passage that follows it is anything but conventional. It moves through a sequence of meditations on human dissolution, addresses the passing stranger directly, and ends with a plea: "I am what thou wilt be, and have been what thou art, pray for me, I beseech thee." Above the inscription, the MacDonagh coat-of-arms is elaborately sculpted, decorated with mouldings and obelisks, making for an interesting contrast between the ornamental ambition of the carving and the severity of the words beneath it. A son of the family was also buried within the same tomb. The monument was noted by Barry in 1892, suggesting it was already attracting antiquarian attention well over a century ago.

Kilfenora church itself is a roofless Romanesque and medieval structure, and the monument sits within that open, weathered nave. The chest tomb form, essentially a rectangular stone coffin raised on a base and topped with a flat slab or plaque, was a common format for commemoration among the Irish Catholic gentry of the seventeenth century, though few carry inscriptions of quite this ambition or length.