Ogham is an early medieval script, used primarily in Ireland between roughly the fourth and seventh centuries, in which letters are represented by sets of notches and scores cut along the edge or face of a standing stone. Most ogham inscriptions record personal names in a fairly consistent formula. This one does not cooperate.

The stone was found at Tullig More, County Cork, in 1841, partially buried, and what was underground at the time of discovery appears to have been its working face. Writing in 1932, Power described it as a pillar approximately five feet tall, with well-cut, clear scorings that were nonetheless difficult to interpret; his reading was EGSAMVVA MAQI LASCOG[I]. By 1945, Macalister was working from a stone he described as being of extremely irregular shape, the result of what he called violent treatment, with only the surface between two lines of writing left intact. He proposed a reading of MAQILASPOG B TTMACDE, and went further, suggesting that letters had originally been painted rather than carved in the gap between B and TT, which would have completed the word BENEDICATT. From this, he constructed a Christian interpretation: 'May the Son of God bless Bishop Maqil'. He also argued that a still earlier inscription had once existed on the stone and had been entirely destroyed, and that the surviving Christian text was cut onto what was originally the base of the monument, which would explain why it was in the ground when the stone was unearthed. McManus, writing in 2004, offered a more cautious reading of MAQI LAS?OG, B/M[ ]TTM[ ]Cge, and dismissed Macalister's Christian gloss as rather fanciful. Three scholars, three readings, one damaged stone. The gaps in the inscription, whether caused by erosion, deliberate destruction, or paint that did not survive the centuries, mean the text may never be resolved with any confidence.