That those stones turned out to be ogham stones, each bearing the marks of an early medieval writing system cut in notches along a stone's edge, makes the find at Ballyknock in County Cork particularly striking. Ogham script works by scoring lines across or along a central stemline, typically the narrow edge or corner of a standing stone, and was used in Ireland roughly between the fourth and seventh centuries to record names and lineages, often as grave markers. Finding fifteen of them repurposed as roofing slabs over a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber associated with early Irish settlement sites, suggests that by the time the souterrain was built or modified, the original meaning or significance of the inscriptions had been set aside in favour of the purely practical.

The stone now held at University College Cork is one of that group, measuring just over three feet in height and roughly a foot across. Its inscription is cut in fine scores on the dexter side, meaning the right-hand edge when the stone faces you. Scholars have read it differently across the decades. R. A. S. Macalister, writing in 1945, transcribed the text as DOMMO MACI VEDUCERI, with a note that the first word might instead be DEGO. Damian McManus, working from the stone more recently in 2004, offered a more cautious reading of D[ ]MM[ ]MACi [ ]eRI, with gaps indicating letters he could not confidently resolve. The formula MACI, meaning "son of", is a standard feature of ogham inscriptions, so some version of a personal name followed by a patronymic is almost certainly what the original carver intended.

The stone is on permanent display in the Stone Corridor at University College Cork, where the university has long housed a significant collection of ogham stones. It is one of the more accessible ways to encounter the script in person, in a setting where several inscribed stones can be seen side by side.