The stone, just under two metres long and now lying on its side, has deep linear scores cut into both of its exposed corners. At first glance, the grooves might suggest ogham, the early medieval script in which letters were rendered as a series of notches and strokes cut along the edge of a stone. Ogham stones are found across Ireland, and an apparent example would have attracted considerable attention in the antiquarian circles of the nineteenth century. The trouble is, these lines do not actually conform to any ogham characters. What they more likely represent is a known phenomenon from that period, a deliberate hoax, in which standing stones were scored with fake ogham-like markings specifically to mislead collectors and scholars of the day.

The stone now lies partially embedded in the fosse, the surrounding ditch, of a ring-barrow, a type of low circular burial mound enclosed by a ditch and bank, placing it in the western quadrant of that monument. Whether it fell naturally, was pushed, or was repositioned at some point is unclear, but local memory holds that it was still upright within living recall. Its third corner, the one buried in the ground, appears to carry no markings at all, which raises the question of whether the scoring was added after the stone had already begun to lean, or whether that face was simply left blank by whoever wielded the chisel. The flat, poorly drained valley floor at Cooga is not the kind of landscape that draws attention, which may be part of why this small, quietly complicated object has gone largely unremarked.