Ogham is an early medieval script, most commonly found in Ireland, in which letters are represented by notches and strokes cut along the edge of a stone. On this particular stone, the inscription running along one edge is cut in fine lines and is now badly flaked; scholars have read it as something close to COLOMAGNI AVI DUCURI, a formula typical of early Irish memorial stones recording lineage. The inscription on the opposite edge is a different matter entirely: punched in bold, heavy scores, it reads BRUSCO MAQI DOVALESCI. Two hands, two techniques, possibly two separate purposes or periods of use, on a single stone.

The stone was discovered in 1844 in a souterrain at Glenawillin in County Cork. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, usually associated with a ringfort, which served for storage or concealment. In this case the souterrain sat within a ringfort, and it yielded not one but two ogham stones. The readings of the first stone have been debated by successive scholars: Macalister, writing in 1945, offered a relatively full transcription, while McManus, in a 2004 study, found portions of the text too damaged to resolve with confidence. The second stone found in the same souterrain was eventually re-erected elsewhere in the townland, on the site of what a nineteenth-century account described as another erased rath, a ringfort that had been levelled and was no longer visible above ground. That both stones ended up displaced from their original context, one moved to Cork City and one repositioned within the local landscape, is itself a reminder of how frequently early medieval monuments were shifted, reused, and reinterpreted long before anyone thought to record them systematically.