The stone, measuring roughly 1.39 metres by 0.38 metres, bears a series of shallow depressions on its upper surface. Geologically, these are most likely natural formations, the kind of weathered hollows that appear in exposed rock across Ireland. Locally, they are understood as something else entirely.

According to tradition, the marks were left by a figure known as St. Abbey, pressed into the stone as she passed through on her way to Ballyvourney, a village in the Derrynasaggart foothills of west Cork that has been associated with early Christian pilgrimage for well over a thousand years. The cult centred on Ballyvourney is primarily that of St. Gobnait, a figure from early medieval Ireland, and the broader area carries a long memory of saints travelling these routes, pausing, and leaving traces. Holy or saint's stones of this kind, rocks where a hollow or impression is attributed to a saint's knee, hand, or foot, appear at various points across the Irish landscape. They function as physical punctuation marks along old sacred paths, fixing a moving story to a particular place. Whether St. Abbey was a distinct historical figure, a local echo of another saint's name, or a tradition that has shifted over time, the record does not say. What survives is the stone and the story attached to it.