Ogham is an early Irish script, typically carved as a series of notches and strokes along the edge of a standing stone, and used mainly between the fourth and seventh centuries to record names and lineage. One of the two stones recovered that year is a substantial slab, seven feet two inches tall and measuring one foot ten inches by six inches across, and it carries not one but two separate inscriptions, which is itself unusual.

What makes the stone particularly interesting is the tension between its two faces. The dexter inscription, cut in fine lines, has flaked badly over time, leaving scholars to work with an incomplete text; Macalister, writing in 1945, read it as COLOMAGNI AVI DUCURI, while McManus, revising that reading in 2004, rendered it more cautiously as COLOMAGNi [ ]V[ ]DU[ ]U, acknowledging the gaps the damage has left. The sinister inscription, by contrast, was punched in bold, deep scores and has survived in considerably better condition; both scholars agree it reads substantially as BRUSCO MAQI DOVALESCI, a formula typical of ogham stones in recording a personal name followed by the word for son. The stone was found alongside a second ogham stone in the same souterrain, which was later re-erected within the townland on the site of what Atkinson, writing in 1883 to 1884, described as another erased rath, a ringfort whose earthworks had been ploughed or worn away entirely. The souterrain itself sits partially beneath the present Ballynatrasna House, meaning the ground that once held these inscriptions is now domestic floor.

The stone from Glenawillin is no longer in Cork. It has been on permanent display in the Stone Corridor at University College Cork, where it sits among a notable collection of ogham stones, and can be seen there without any particular difficulty.