The uncertainty is the point. The stone was recorded, noted, and then lost, and no one locally could say what had become of it.

Ogham is an early medieval script, typically carved as a series of notches and strokes along the edge or angle of a standing stone, used primarily to record personal names in an archaic form of Irish. The Burgatia stone was first observed by John Windele, a Cork antiquarian active in the nineteenth century, who found a rectangular block measuring roughly a metre long and less than half a metre wide, partly hidden by grass. Along one of its long angles, he identified what he believed was a single ogham character, either the letter Q or N, positioned roughly in the middle of the edge. It was a fragmentary survival even then. The stone sits, or sat, in the graveyard that also contains the remains of Templefachtna, a medieval church site, placing it in ground that had clearly been significant for many centuries. R. A. S. Macalister included it in his 1945 catalogue of Irish ogham inscriptions, working from Windele's earlier account.

When researchers visited the site more recently, the stone could not be found. The grass had won, or the stone had been moved, or both. What remains is a recorded measurement, a single ambiguous letter, and a graveyard that keeps its own counsel.