Cut in 1642, the year after the outbreak of the Ulster rebellion and the beginning of years of widespread conflict across the island, it is easy to imagine the carving of such a stone as a quietly defiant act of commemoration, though the slab itself makes no such declaration. It simply lies there, rectangular and deliberate, just over a metre and three-quarters long and eighty centimetres wide, its surface worked in false relief, a technique where the background is cut away to leave the design proud of the surrounding stone rather than incised into it.

The decoration is spare and considered. A Latin cross runs the length of the slab, with the Christogram 'IHS', an abbreviation drawn from the Greek rendering of the name of Jesus and widely used in Catholic devotional art, carved at the head, and the year 1642 marked at the foot. Who exactly lies beneath it has blurred in the way that local memory tends to blur particular details while preserving the general outline. A source recorded by Devaney in 1981 notes that the stone is believed locally to mark the grave of either the father of someone known as Faghny Farrell, or a local priest. The Farrell family were a prominent Gaelic family in County Longford, lords of Annaly, and the name recurs throughout the county's history. Whether this connection is accurate or simply a piece of inherited attribution is impossible to say with certainty.