Mass rock

Sandhill Mass Rock site near Dunfanaghy, County Donegal

Mass Rock on Achill Island, County Mayo

A Mass rock (Irish: Carraig an Aifrinn) was a rock used as an altar in mid-17th century Ireland as a location for Catholic Mass. Similar stones in Scotland, known as Mass stones, were used by the similarly illegal and underground Catholic Church in Scotland, membership in which was criminalised following the Scottish Reformation in the mid-16th century.

In Ireland, during the religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Ireland that began under Henry VIII and ended only with Catholic Emancipation in 1829, the Irish people, according to Marcus Tanner, clung to the Mass, "crossed themselves when they passed Protestant ministers on the road, had to be dragged into Protestant churches and put cotton wool in their ears rather than listen to Protestant sermons". Isolated locations were sought to hold religious ceremonies, as observing the Catholic Mass was a matter of difficulty and danger at the time as a result of both Cromwell's campaign against the Irish, and the Penal Law of 1695. Bishops were banished and priests had to register to preach under the 1704 Registration Act. Priest hunters were employed to arrest Catholic priests, Presbyterian ministers, and nonjuring Vicars of the Scottish Episcopal Church under an Act of 1709.

Scotland

The entrance to Cathedral Cave upon the isle of Eigg, with An Sgùrr in the background.

In Scotland, Mass stones were used by the illegal and underground Catholic Church in Scotland, membership in which had been criminalised following the Scottish Reformation in 1560 and which remained unlawful until Catholic Emancipation in 1829. The locations of many former Mass stones and thatched Mass houses, for example, were established by the research of Dom Odo Blundell of Fort Augustus Abbey and published in his two volume book The Catholic Highlands of Scotland.

On the isle of Eigg, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, which was described in 1698 as almost entirely Roman Catholic, the laity secretly and illegally attended Mass at a Mass stone inside a large high-roofed coastal cave, which is still known as the "cave of worship" (Scottish Gaelic: Uamh a' Chrabhaidh) (or in English Cathedral Cave).

Due to the "arbitrary and malicious violence" that Hanoverian Redcoats inflicted, the aftermath of the 1746 Battle of Culloden is still referred to in the Highlands and Islands as Bliadhna nan Creach ("The Year of the Pillaging"). Furthermore, posses of Redcoats scoured the Scottish Highlands and Islands in search of Roman Catholic priests. Moreover, it was common practice for the Redcoats to threaten to burn Catholic homesteads and confiscate all locally owned cattle and sheep unless any local priests were either given up or surrendered themselves.

St. Ninian's Church was built in 1755 as a strictly illegal "Mass house" at Enzie, Moray.

However, according to Marcus Tanner, "As the Reformed Church faltered in the urban and increasingly industrialised Lowlands, Presbyterianism made its great breakthrough among the Gaelic Highlanders, virtually snapping cultural bonds that had linked them to Ireland since the lordship of Dalriada. The Highlands, outside tiny Catholic enclaves like in South Uist and Barra, took on the contours they have since preserved - a region marked by a strong tradition of sabbatarianism and a puritanical distaste for instrumental music and dancing, which have only recently regained popular acceptance". Even so, local cultural memories still remained.

While working in the 1880s as a hired farmhand for Robert Menzies of Tirinie, near Aberfeldy, Perthshire, however, South Uist seanchaidh Angus Beag MacLellan learned that a Mass stone had stood in the middle of Menzies's farmfield since the days when Roman Catholic priests were outlawed in Scotland. A nearby high cross, Menzies added, marked the site of an important college of learning from the days of the Celtic Church. Menzies explained that, even though the local population had long since switched to Presbyterianism, former Catholic religious sites were still locally viewed with superstitious awe and were never tampered with. Menzies explained that the term for Mass stones, in the Perthshire dialect of the Scottish Gaelic language, was Clachan Ìobairt, meaning "Offering Stones".

Also according to Marcus Tanner, "The Disruption and the Free Church have come in for harsh criticism especially from the political left in recent years. Apart from inflicting a peculiarly censorious and dour version of Christianity on the population, they are charged with imbuing them with ultra-Calvinist pessimism and political passivity, and with encouraging them to dwell on trivial points of doctrine while their communities were being laid waste by the landlords. There is something in the charge. Few Highland ministers emulated the Catholic clergy of Ireland, who commandeered the Repeal movement in the 1830s and 1840s and the land campaigns several decades on. The Catholic clergy in agitated Irish counties like Tipperary led the agrarian militants from the front, which cannot be said for most Disruption clergy or their successors. Evangelical Presbyterianism counseled submission and acceptance of misfortune. But it was a faith chosen quite voluntarily by the people and if it failed to make them rebels against injustice, it certainly lent them dignity".

Ireland

Use and records

In many instances in Ireland, a stone would be taken from a church ruin, and relocated to a rural area, with a simple cross carved on its top. Because the activity was illegal, the services were not scheduled and parishioners would be obliged to spread the word of them informally. By the late 17th century worship generally moved to thatched "Mass houses". Some of the Mass rock places may also have been used for patterns.

Tony Nugent refers to what was reputedly the last killing of a Roman Catholic priest at a Mass rock at Inse an tSagairt, near Bonane, County Kerry, in 1829. According to the local oral tradition, a local woman who ran a nearby shebeen, conspired with five men to kill a priest and split the £45 bounty among themselves. After capturing the priest during Mass, beheading him at a house near Kenmare, and bringing his severed head to Cork city, the six conspirators learned that Catholic Emancipation had just been signed into law and that no reward would be given. In frustration, the six priest hunters threw the severed head into the River Lee.

Partial data on Mass rocks is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of Ireland (for pre-1700 sites), and, to a lesser extent, the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (for post-1700 sites).

Later use

In later years, the practice of open-air Masses was limited to rural areas in Ireland, and special occasions such as pattern days and Christmas. However, in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic and the restrictions placed on indoor gatherings to address the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) Ireland launched an initiative to celebrate Mass at some Mass Rocks.

Folklore

"February 3, 1828

...There is a lonely path near Uisce Dun and Móinteán na Cisi which is called the Mass Boreen. The name comes from the time when the Catholic Church was persecuted in Ireland, and Mass had to be said in woods and on moors, on wattled places in bogs, and in caves. But as the proverb says, It is better to look forward with one eye than to look backwards with two..."

• From Cín Lae Amhlaoibh by Amhlaoibh Ó Súilleabháin (1780 – 1838). Translated by Tomás de Bhaldraithe.

According to a book of history and folklore associated with Mass rocks by Tony Nugent, "There is a common story associated with quite a few which relates how the priest was shot or killed at the moment of Transubstantiation. There is a common belief that at this point in the Mass the priest cannot stop for any reason. There are various stories of Protestant neighbours hiding or helping priests. There are stories of miracles, the story of the widow's hunger, happening at these sites, stories of cures and indeed a whole fabric of folklore which if lost would be a cultural tragedy".

Parallels in other faiths

During the same era in mainland Britain, Puritans, Presbyterians, Quakers, Anabaptists, and other non-Conformists held similarly outlawed Conventicles in defiance of the Royal Supremacy and then of the Protectorate of England under Oliver Cromwell, although they were not religious ceremonies.

For the Lutheran minority during the Counter-Reformation in the Austrian Empire, a similar stone in Paternion was dubbed the hundskirche.

See also

• "Have you been at Carrick?" — folk song about attending a Mass rock service
• Mass rocks in Clontibret
• Mass rock (Portglenone)