The slab stands a short distance east of the east gable of the structure called the Priest's House, and its surface has spalled, meaning flakes of stone have broken away along its sides and top, taking portions of its inscription with them. What remains is legible enough to be tantalising, and damaged enough to be genuinely puzzling.

The east face of the stone reads, in the formal funerary phrasing common to late seventeenth-century Irish grave markers: "Here lyeth ye body of Murlaugh Doyle died... July... 1697 aged 4." The name Murlaugh, an anglicisation of the old Irish Muirchertach, places this within a recognisable tradition of Gaelic naming that persisted well into the early modern period. The date appears to be July 1697, though the exact day is partly obscured by damage. The figure given for age is 4, though the broken edge of the slab leaves open the possibility that a further digit once followed, which would change the reading entirely. Whether this was a child of four years, or a person of forty-something, cannot now be determined with certainty. The day of the month is similarly ambiguous, recorded as what looks like either the letter S or the numeral 5, with a superscript d suggesting an ordinal suffix.