Cut in Gothic lettering in high false relief, the text asks the passer-by to pause and say a Pater and an Ave, a Our Father and a Hail Mary, for the soul of the man commemorated. That the stone has been making this appeal continuously since 1519 gives it a quietly insistent quality that few monuments manage.

The slab, measuring 1.56 metres long and 0.65 metres wide, is set within a trefoil tomb niche in the north transept, a trefoil being a three-lobed decorative arch common in Gothic church architecture. It commemorates Geoffry Arthur, who served as Treasurer of the cathedral and died on the 16th of May 1519. The Latin inscription, which contracts and abbreviates words in the manner typical of medieval stone carving, was translated by Canon Meredyth in his guide to the cathedral and later cited by Fitzgerald in 1910. The full text, rendered into English, reads: "Here lies in the bottom of the tomb, withdrawn from the world, Geoffry Arthur, formerly Treasurer of this Church. He rested in perpetual peace on the 16th light of May, in the year of the Crucified Lord 1519. Thou who passest by take heed that thou sayest here a Pater and an Ave." The Urban Survey of Limerick, compiled by Bradley and others in 1989, records the stone formally under the reference LI005-017015.

St. Mary's Cathedral is open to visitors and sits on the south side of the city, close to the river. The north transept, where the memorial is located, is accessible from the main body of the cathedral. The contracted Latin text on the stone rewards a close look; once you know the translation, the abbreviated phrases resolve into something more legible, and the request embedded in those final lines becomes unexpectedly immediate for an inscription more than five centuries old.