Mass rock

[4][5] The island in Loch Morar known as Eilean Bàn was briefly the location first of a Mass stone and then of an illegal and clandestine Catholic minor seminary founded by Bishop James Gordon, until the Jacobite rising of 1715 forced its closure and eventual reopening at Scalan in Glenlivet.

According to Marcus Tanner, "[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".

Before St Patrick's Church was formally organized in 1830, the growing population of Irish and Highland Scots Catholics living in nearby Dumbarton would meet at the chapel ruins for prayers and Masses offered by a visiting priest from Greenock.

[12] The ruins of an Iron Age hill fort and a mediæval chapel, dedicated to St. Michael, lie at the summit of Ysgyryd Fawr in the Black Mountains.

Furthermore, the illegal and underground Jesuit mission based at Cwm and led by future Catholic martyr St. David Lewis, regularly visited the ruined chapel atop Ysgyryd Fawr, which was the site of a Mass rock.

In 1678, local magistrate and priest hunter John Arnold alleged in the House of Commons that, "he hath seen a hundred Papists meet at the top of Skyrrid for Mass.

[1] Tony Nugent, in a book about the history and folklore of Mass rocks, traces their use even earlier, to the 1536 Act of Supremacy and the 1540 Suppression of the Monasteries by Henry VIII.

Particularly following the latter, stones were taken from the ruins of Pre-Reformation churches or monasteries, and relocated to more isolated areas, often with a simple cross carved on their tops, to continue being used for religious purposes.

In addition, "megalithic tombs, ring-forts, stone circles, druidic altars, and wells - these monuments to a once proud race - were to be recycled by a persecuted people in order that they could practice their religion in secret".

[16][18] According to Irish historian and folklorist (seanchaí), Seumas MacManus, "Throughout these dreadful centuries, too, the hunted priest -- who in his youth had been smuggled to the Continent of Europe to receive his training -- tended to the flame of faith.

"[19] For example, the Mass rock near Kinvara, County Galway, is known in Connaught Irish as Poll na gCeann ("chasm of the heads") and is said to have been the location of a massacre by the soldiers of Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army.

Writing in 1668, Janvin de Rochefort commented, "Even in Dublin more than twenty houses where Mass is secretly said, and in about a thousand places, subterranean vaults and retired spots in the woods".

[21] Catholic worship, however, was soon to return to the Mass rocks due to the Exclusion Crisis and the anti-Catholic show trials masterminded by Lord Shaftesbury and Titus Oates.

The local "folk belief" suggests that a criminal gang, based in Glengarriff and consisting of a woman and five men, conspired to kill the priest and split a £45 bounty among themselves.

Other versions of the story hold that O'Neill's clerk was also taken prisoner and brought to Dromore Castle, but later managed to escape by being carried to safety by the "two mastiff bloodhounds" that were sent to pursue him.

[40] 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.