The older text reads simply CARI, running vertically along the face of the stone. Above it, oriented at a right angle as though the later hand did not quite register what was already there, someone carved the initials P.O.M. and the year 1814.

Teampall Bheanáin is one of the smallest early medieval churches in Ireland, a single-cell oratory associated with Saint Benignus, a fifth-century disciple of Saint Patrick. The slab itself measures roughly 44 centimetres by 42 centimetres and is only about 11 centimetres thick. It was almost certainly moved to its present position in the south-east wall during conservation works at the site, rather than found in situ, which means its original context is lost. The Latin word CARI is a genitive form meaning "of a dear one" or "of the beloved", a formula that appears on early Christian memorial stones across Ireland and Britain, where it typically formed part of a longer dedicatory or funerary inscription. Whether the rest of that inscription survives elsewhere, or was never on this particular stone, is not recorded. The 1814 addition, with its neat initials and date running horizontally across the older lettering, is the kind of casual mark that travellers and curious visitors left on ancient stones throughout the nineteenth century, rarely with any apparent awareness of what they were writing over.