Ogham, the early medieval script that encodes names and lineages as a series of notches and strokes cut along a stone's edge, was typically raised upright as a marker. Yet one of two stones now associated with a ringfort site at Coomlogane in County Cork spent an unknown stretch of centuries lying flat, pressed into service as a structural lintel inside a souterrain, the kind of underground stone-lined passage sometimes built within or beside a ringfort for storage or refuge. The inscription was still visible even in that position, though whether anyone in the intervening centuries could read it is another matter.

The stone came to light in 1981, when quarrying at Coomlogane disturbed a ringfort and exposed the souterrain beneath it. Excavation followed, and it became clear that two ogham stones had been reused as lintels in the second chamber of the underground passage. Both were removed, initially to Millstreet Community School, and this particular stone, measuring 1.90 metres long by 0.40 metres wide and 0.15 metres thick, was later transferred to Millstreet Museum, where it is currently on display. The inscription, reading downwards in its present orientation, gives the formula COLMANN MACI COMGGANN, meaning roughly Colmann, son of Comggann. This kind of patronymic formula is typical of early medieval ogham inscriptions in Ireland, functioning less as a memorial in the modern sense and more as a territorial or genealogical marker, asserting a name and a lineage in stone.