The stone measures 4.3 metres by 3.2 metres and stands 2.4 metres high, which makes it less a standing stone in the conventional sense and more an enormous presence on the landscape, the kind of thing that stops you mid-stride.

The more prosaic explanation is that the boulder may be a glacial erratic, a rock carried far from its origin by ice sheets during the last glacial period and deposited, seemingly at random, when the ice retreated. Erratics often end up in improbable positions on hilltops and open ridges, which is precisely what tends to attract mythology to them. The Cronebane ridge runs northeast to southwest, and the boulder sits along that line, whether by accident of glaciation or deliberate prehistoric placement. The two possibilities are not always easy to separate. Large natural boulders were sometimes incorporated into the ritual or symbolic landscape by early peoples, given meaning by their sheer incongruity. Whether this one was ever anything more than a geological curiosity dressed in legend is not settled.