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A Mass rock (Irish language: Carraig an Aifrinn) was a rock used as an altar by the Catholic Church in Ireland, during the 17th and 18th centuries, as a location for secret and illegal gatherings of faithful attending the Mass offered by outlawed priests. Similar altars, known as Mass stones (), were used by the Catholic Church in Scotland, membership in which was similarly criminalised by the Scottish Reformation Parliament in 1560.
During the religious persecution of the Catholic Church in Ireland, 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 the Reformation in Ireland, Cromwell's campaign against the Irish, and the Penal Laws of 1695. Bishops were banished and priests had to register to preach under the Registration Act 1704. were also sometimes employed to arrest Catholic priests and Nonjuring schism Vicars of the Scottish Episcopal Church.
In modern Ireland, a number of Mass rocks remain places of pilgrimage by local Catholic parishioners, with open air Masses offered at some sites. In response to restrictions on indoor gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland, services were offered at several Mass rocks during 2020.
On the isle of Eigg, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, which was described in 1698 as almost entirely Roman Catholic,John Lorne Campbell, "Canna; The Story of a Hebridean Island," Oxford University Press, 1984, pp. 91-92. the laity secretly and illegally attended Tridentine Mass at a Mass stone inside a large high-roofed coastal cave, which could only be accessed during low tide and which is still known as the "cave of worship" (; in English Cathedral Cave). Massacre and Cathedral Caves, Walk Highlands. Walk: Eigg caves – massacres & masses
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.Odo Blundell (1917), The Catholic Highlands of Scotland, Volume II, pp. 88-89. Even long afterwards, Eilean Bàn remained a secret chapel and library for Bishop Gordon's successors.John Watts (2004), Hugh MacDonald: Highlander, Jacobite, Bishop, Birlinn Limited. pp. 31-32.
The oral tradition preserved the former locations of Mass stones and Mass houses in at least some regions. According to the autobiography dictated to John Lorne Campbell by South Uist seanchaidh and Crofting Angus Beag MacLellan (1869–1966), while working as a hired hand on Robert Menzies' farm near Aberfeldy, Perthshire in the 1880s, Menzies told him that a Mass stone had stood in the farm field. A nearby high cross, marked the site of an important college of learning dating from the days of the Celtic Church. 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, was Clachan Ìobairt, lit. "offering stones". Angus MacLellan (1997), The Furrow Behind Me, Birlinn Limited. Pages 25–26, 42–43, 196–198.
The 1467 ruins of St. Mahew's Chapel in Cardross, which stand on the site of a 6th-century Celtic Church monastery, are also the former location of a Mass stone. 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 Tridentine Mass offered by a visiting priest from Greenock. I.M.M. MacPhail (1972), Dumbarton Through the Centuries: A Short History of Dumbarton, Dumbarton Town Council. p. 80. For this and other reasons, ownership of the chapel ruins were acquired by the Archdiocese of Glasgow, who restored them in 1955 into a Catholic church which remains in use.
At the Christian pilgrimage shrine to 'Our Lady of the Highlands', within the grounds of Immaculate Conception Roman Catholic Church near Loch Ness, a new outdoor Mass stone was consecrated by Bishop Hugh Gilbert of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Aberdeen in March 2017.
Nugent also states that "until the passing of the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829", the observation of Catholic ceremonies at Mass rocks was illegal and services were not regularly scheduled. Parishioners would therefore spread word of services at Mass rocks covertly. According to some sources, which were believed by Irish traditional musicians Seamus Ennis and Seosamh Ó hÉanaí, such communication could occur through two coded sets of Irish language lyrics to the Sean Nós song An raibh tú ag an gCarraig. Other sources question this association.
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. He lurked like a thief among the hills. On Sundays and Feast Days he celebrated Mass at a rock, on a remote mountainside, while the congregation knelt on the heather of the hillside, under the open heavens. While he said Mass, faithful sentries watched from all the nearby hilltops, to give timely warning of the approaching priest-hunter and his guard of British soldiers. But sometimes the troops came on them unawares, and the Mass Rock was bespattered with his blood, -- and men, women, and children caught in the crime of worshipping God among the rocks, were frequently slaughtered on the mountainside." Seamus MacManus (1921), The Story of the Irish Race, Barnes & Noble. pp. 462-463.
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. Historian Tony Nugent states that, "According to local tradition, there was a college nearby and some of the student monks were killed there by Cromwellian soldiers while attending Mass and their heads were thrown into a nearby chasm".
During the Stuart Restoration, Catholic worship generally moved to thatched "Mass houses" (, lit. ‘Mass Cabin’). 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".
Catholic worship, however, was soon to return to the Mass rocks due to the Exclusion Crisis and the Popish Plot masterminded by Lord Shaftesbury and Titus Oates.
According to a book on the history and folklore of Mass rocks by Tony Nugent, a Catholic priest named Fr. Mac Aidghalle was murdered while saying Mass at a mass rock still known in Ulster Irish as Cloch na hAltorach that stands atop Slieve Gullion, County Armagh. The perpetrators were a company of redcoats under the command of a priest hunter named Turner. Redmond O'Hanlon, the outlawed but de facto Chief of the Name of Clan O'Hanlon and leading local rapparee, is said in local oral tradition to have avenged the murdered priest and in so doing to have "sealed his own fate".
The persecution and use of the Mass rocks escalated further following the 1688 overthrow of the House of Stuart, and the passing of the Penal Laws.
While being interviewed by Tadhg Ó Murchú of the Irish Folklore Commission, Peig Minihane-O'Driscoll of Ardgroom, of the Beara Peninsula in County Cork said that the local Mass rock, known in Munster Irish as Clochán a' tSagairt was located at a cairn to the south. Minihane-O'Driscoll also stated that her husband had been born before Catholic Emancipation and that her in-laws had twice carried their baby son up into the Slieve Miskish Mountains, seeking to secretly make contact and request the baptism of their son from one of the two outlawed priest known to be in hiding locally, one near Ballycrovane Wood and another near Castletownbere.
Partial data on Mass rock sites is maintained by the Archaeological Survey of Ireland (for pre-1700 sites),Denis Power (1992). Archaeological Inventory of County Cork, Volume 3: Mid Cork, 1997, Duchas The Heritage Society. Filter and, to a lesser extent, the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (for post-1700 sites). Some of the Mass rock places may also have been used for patterns.
In 2020, because of the restrictions on indoor gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland, there were proposals to hold services at some Mass rocks.
Though the name of Fr. John O'Neill does not appear on the 1992 list of Catholic priests known to have served locally, a local oral tradition alleges that he was the last Catholic priest killed at a Mass rock, at Inse an tSagairt, near Bonane, County Kerry, c.1829. 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. According to the story, after capturing Fr. O'Neill, beheading him, 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. The perpetrators then allegedly threw O'Neill's severed head into the River Lee in frustration. 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. The site at Inse an tSagairt was also associated with the reputed miraculous cure of the mother of Fr. Eugene Daly. Both Fr. O'Neill's martyrdom and the cure of Mrs. Daly have been commemorated in locally composed poetry. A hiking path was later built to the site in 1981, by Coillte, at the insistence of Fr. Daly (who died in 2001). Inse an tSagairt is still sometimes used for open air commemorative Masses and there is a plaque next to the altar which names Fr. John O'Neill. Other Mass rock locations in the same area were an Alhóir, near the summit of Mount Esker, An Seana-Shéipeil at Garrymore, and Faill-a Shéipéil at Gearha.
For the Lutheran minority during the Counter-Reformation in the Austrian Empire, a similar stone in Paternion was dubbed the hundskirche.
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