The example near Dunmanway in west Cork earns attention not through scale but through precision: a rectangular block of stone, aligned east to west, measuring 1.46 metres in height and just 46 by 20 centimetres in cross-section. It is unusually regular and angular for a monument of its type, with clean lines that read more like worked masonry than a rough field orthostat.

Standing stones as a category cover a wide span of prehistory, erected at various points during the Neolithic and Bronze Age for purposes that remain debated, ranging from territorial markers to ritual focal points. What sets this particular stone apart, at least in the eyes of those who have examined it, is the suggestion that its role may have been considerably more mundane. The regularity of its form and its location in pasture raise the possibility that it served, or was at some point repurposed, as a scratching stone, a fixed post against which grazing cattle could relieve an itch. Whether that was its original function or a later convenience is impossible to say. The east-west alignment is consistent with patterns seen in prehistoric standing stones elsewhere in Munster, though alignment alone carries no definitive meaning. The stone stands in open pasture with long views to the west, which is a position typical of monuments that were meant to be seen, or to see from.