It is one of three ogham stones, those early medieval inscribed monuments whose notched and scored alphabets run along the edges and angles of upright slabs, and it carries a message carved across two of its angles that has been read as MAQI-ERCIASMAQI VALAMNI, a formula typical of the tradition: a personal name, followed by a patronymic, identifying a lineage in the oldest surviving form of written Irish.

The stone was found in 1865 inside a souterrain at Rooves More in County Cork. A souterrain is an underground stone-lined passage or chamber, usually associated with an early medieval settlement, and often used for storage or refuge. The three ogham stones had apparently been repurposed as structural material within it, a fate common to many such inscriptions, which were frequently incorporated into later buildings long after their original commemorative function had been forgotten. The man who removed the stones was A. Lane-Fox, later better known as Augustus Pitt Rivers, the archaeologist and collector. All three were taken to England and eventually entered the British Museum's collections. The epigrapher R. A. S. Macalister later recorded and published the inscription, placing it as number 125 in his 1945 corpus of Irish ogham stones, and noting its dimensions: 2.4 metres long, 0.8 metres wide, and 0.2 metres thick.

There is, practically speaking, nothing to see at Rooves More today in relation to these particular stones. The souterrain that sheltered them remains in the townland, but the inscribed slabs themselves have been absent from the country since the year of their discovery.