The Latin verse running along its left edge and up across the cross is straightforward enough, a plea on behalf of the dead: "Although beneath this tomb in ashes now they lie, still grant them thou O Lord! The rest they craved on high." But clustered on the cross-head is a separate series of letter groups, M.M.M.M., S.U.A.M., N.S.M.S., and others, whose meaning remains uncertain. They do not correspond to any known formula, and no satisfactory explanation has been proposed.

The slab itself is a substantial piece of work, standing 1.74 metres above ground, 0.83 metres wide, and about 0.12 metres thick on average. Its carved cross features a lozenge-shaped centre from which four arms extend, each terminating in a large trefoil. Cross-bands mark the transition between shaft and head, and a similar arrangement appears at the base of the shaft where it meets the partially buried cross-base. A narrow raised border follows the margin of the cross design, set within a broader border that frames the whole face of the stone. The upper left edge and top carry hollow and ovolo mouldings, a decorative profile of concave and convex curves common in late medieval stonework, though the top left corner has since broken away. The full Latin inscription was published by Knowles in 1903, and the physical description by Maher in 1997, but the cryptic letter groups on the cross-head have attracted no definitive interpretation in the century since they were first noted.

The slab stands third from the west in its row, pressed against the external north wall of the north transept of the abbey. Fethard's Augustinian friary is accessible in the town, and the graveyard around it contains several such slabs, so the inscribed stone is easy enough to locate once you know to count along the row.