The Ghostly Mass

Throughout the length and breadth of Ireland, one comes across tales of the supernatural in which the Mass figures prominently, and, not surprisingly, many of these have close associations with Penal times. Strange music is heard from a locked church at night, a priest sees the ghost of his predecessor on the altar, and old houses have legends of a 'hidden room', the 'priest's room', in which a hunted priest sought refuge when pursued by soldiers.

One of the best of these has been recorded by Seamus MacManus in his Heavy Hangs the Golden Grain.

MacManus was a superb historian of his own Donegal countryside, and the folktales he garnered proved a rich literary harvest. His story of a ghostly encounter at a Mass rock in Co. Donegal provides an example, too, of his storytelling art at its best.

I heard of a Gweebarra man who was travelling over the mountains on the night of All Souls' Eve, to be at Glenties fair early next day, where he wanted to buy a slip of a pig. He drew upon a light that it surprised him to see in the old scalan on the southwest side of Dunnasalagh hill. Great was his surprise when, coming near the old Mass Rock of that territory - Rock that hadn't spread the news for thirty-five years before, since the new chapel was built at Kilclooney - he saw the rock altar laid out for Mass, the candles lit, and a priest in his vestments standing by, as if he had sent a messenger for something and was awaiting his return.

Though he thought it queer, the Gweebarra man believed it was some strange emergency whereby the priest had to say Mass in the middle of the night, and say it there. Taking off his hat and coming closer, he knelt on the heather, close to the altar, and the priest, coming to him, asked if he could serve Mass. 'In my own kind of way, yes,' said the man. 'They call on me sometimes to do it at the Station house.' At the same time he was staring hard at a scar on the left side of the priest's face, reaching from the top of his head till it disappeared down under his jaw. 'Thanks be to the Lord!' said the priest. 'I have been a long time waiting for you. Come forward, and we'll begin.'

And they did. When the Mass was finished, the Gweebarra man, as he was used to help pack up the Mass things at the Station, made an offer to do the same now. 'Don't bother,' said the priest. 'Go ahead with your journey and God go with you! I'll not forget you,' he added, 'for you have done me a greater service than you know.'

Wondering why the simple serving of Mass for a shorthanded priest should be regarded so highly the man went on to Glenties, purchased his little pig, and on his way home, carrying the pig in a bag on his back, called for a drink of milk at a house in Dunnasalagh, where they made him sit and eat supper. At the supper, he asked the people the reason for the priest saying Mass at the scalan up the hill, in the middle of last night.

His question dumbfounded them; and then he told them his experience, describing the great scar that was on the priest's face. 'Well, well, well!' said the man of the house, 'that's the most extraordinary thing I've heard in a long while. It has been five and thirty years since Mass was said at that scalar, and with us it has the name of being haunted - ever since Friar O'Boyle died five and fifty years before that again. The friar all his latter days carried a great scar on the left side of his face from the cut of a soldier's sword, once that the redcoats cornered and nearly caught him when he made his home in a sheep's craw on the north side of Sliabh Mor.' The old people maintained that the light which people had been used to seeing in the scalar, and its name of being haunted, was by reason the friar (God ease him!) must have died with a Mass on his soul that he left unsaid!

From that day forward, there was never more a light seen in the scalan on Dunnasalagh.

Many of the apparitions of priests have been explained in this fashion; that they come back after death to atone for having neglected to say a Mass that had been requested of them.