Fairyhill is the kind of toponym that appears on old maps and in local speech across Ireland, generally marking places where the boundary between the everyday world and something less easily explained was thought to be unusually thin. An earthwork in such a location would have been interpreted, at various points in history, not simply as a remnant of human construction but as part of that charged geography.

Earthworks of this kind are among the most common and least legible of Irish archaeological monuments. The term covers a broad range of features, from the banks and ditches of enclosed settlements to field boundaries, burial mounds, and ceremonial enclosures, and without detailed excavation or survey it is often difficult to assign a precise function or date. What tends to survive above ground is a subtle alteration of the land surface, a low rise or a shallow depression that catches the eye mainly in low winter light or from certain angles. The association with fairy belief was not incidental. In Irish folk tradition, such mounds and enclosures were understood as the dwelling places of the sídhe, and there was a strong cultural prohibition against disturbing them, a prohibition that, whatever its origins, had the practical effect of preserving a great many ancient earthworks from the plough.