Ogham is an early medieval Irish script in which letters are represented by notches and lines cut along the edges of a stone, typically a standing stone of some size and weight. This particular example measures roughly 57 centimetres in height and just 14 centimetres at its widest point, closer in scale to a large knife than to the imposing pillars the script is usually associated with. It is that very smallness that has made scholars uneasy about it.

The stone was found in 1970 on the townland boundary between Shankill in Co. Kilkenny and Wells in Co. Carlow, and was subsequently given to Rothe House for display. It carries an inscription spread across three angles of the stone, reading downwards: the left angle bears MAQI CUNALIG with a final consonant now hidden behind the wooden mount it sits on; the right front angle reads MAQI; and the right rear angle gives MUCOI COSCIS/N. The formula is a familiar one in ogham epigraphy, invoking descent and tribal affiliation, but the stone's dimensions prompted the scholar Damian McManus, writing in 1991, to suggest that one might reasonably question whether it is genuinely ancient at all. He stopped short of calling it a forgery, but the caveat has stayed with the object. The mount itself compounds the uncertainty, physically concealing part of the very text that might help resolve the question.