Ogham is an early medieval Irish script in which letters are represented by notches and strokes cut along the edge or face of a stone, often recording a personal name in a formulaic genealogical phrase. At Priesttown, that inscription runs along the southern angle of the stone, but only the lower portion is legible; the upper section is lost to lichen, weathering, and what appears to be a break at the top that removed the end of the text entirely. The stone's roughly rectangular form tilts slightly towards the northeast, and its southwestern face is considered the front.

The stone was first identified and recorded by Power in 1900, who read the surviving ogham as SUTACUNAS MAQI, meaning roughly "son of Sutacunas", the word MAQI being the ogham genitive of the Old Irish word for son. R.A.S. Macalister, the prolific cataloguer of Irish ogham stones, returned to it in 1945 with a different reading: NETACUNAS MAQI LOBAC[CONA], suggesting a different personal name and a patronymic that the broken top of the stone cuts short. The disagreement between the two scholars is not unusual; ogham inscriptions worn by centuries of Irish weather frequently leave room for competing interpretations, and the loss of even a few strokes can change a name entirely. What both readings share is the genealogical formula itself, a pattern common across hundreds of such stones from roughly the fourth to the seventh centuries, typically erected to mark territory or commemorate the dead.

The stone sits in pasture beside a farm road running to the southeast, which gives some sense of how to approach it, though the surrounding field boundaries mean access depends on the landowner. The inscription, worn as it is, rewards close attention at the southern angle rather than the broad faces, where the ogham strokes were cut.