It measures roughly half a metre in height and about thirty centimetres by sixty centimetres across, which is to say it is not especially large or visually commanding. What distinguishes it is the name local people have given it: a cursing stone. The tradition of cursing stones in Ireland is old and not entirely comfortable. Such stones were typically used in rituals intended to bring harm or misfortune upon an enemy, often turned or rotated in a specific direction while the curse was spoken aloud. The practice sat awkwardly alongside orthodox Christianity, and yet it persisted in various parts of the country well into recent centuries.

The stone's position is worth noting. It stands immediately to the north-west of a rath, the remains of a roughly circular earthen enclosure of the kind built across Ireland during the early medieval period, roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Raths, sometimes called ring-forts, served primarily as enclosed farmsteads, though they accumulated considerable folklore over time and were widely regarded as places associated with the otherworld. The proximity of the cursing stone to this particular rath is unlikely to be coincidental. In Irish folk tradition, liminal or charged locations, including ancient earthworks, were often where such ritual objects were placed or where specific practices were carried out. Whether the stone predates the rath, was positioned there deliberately in relation to it, or simply acquired its reputation because of its unusual setting beside an already mysterious monument, is not recorded.