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MacPhilpin 1880, Google Books scan of Harvard copy

Internet Archive · 91 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This is an 1880 book, The Apparitions and Miracles at Knock, prepared and edited by John MacPhilpin of Tuam and published in Dublin by M. H. Gill and Son. The Internet Archive holds a Google scan of the Harvard College Library copy. It reprints Tuam News accounts and the official depositions of eye-witnesses to the apparition of 21 August 1879 on the sacristy gable of Knock Church, County Mayo. It argues that natural light could not have caused the apparition and lists cures recorded in Archdeacon Cavanagh's diary.

  • p. 14 …WHAT THE EYE-WITNESSES SAY—Testimonies of Patrick Hill, Mary M'Loughlin, Mary Beirne, Patrick Walsh…
  • p. 20 …In Gaelic, the name "Knock" signifies a hill. The village is surrounded by elevated knolls, which…
  • p. 21 …Looking, for instance, to the south-west, he beholds Cnoc-ban, or fair hill; and to…
  • p. 22 …A second Lourdes has arisen at Knock, a small village surrounded by little hills, from which…
  • p. 34 …but ancient-looking, buildings erected on the hill. He naturally asks: What is that? The site…
  • p. 41 …balls of the figures, which, as Patrick Hill testifies, appeared to him to be those of…
  • p. 44 …rightly due to the evidence of Patrick Hill, of Claremorris, a young, frank, intelligent boy, of…
  • p. 45 …Master Hill declares that they appeared to him to move, and, as it were, on wing…
  • p. 46 …I am Patrick Hill; I live in Claremorris; my aunt lives at Knock; I remember the…
  • p. 49 …myself; I went away then. (Signed) PATRICK HILL. Witness present—U. J. Canon Bourke. October 8th…
  • p. 51 …NOTE.—Mary M'Loughlin had gone away before Patrick Hill came. Their testimony relates to two…
  • p. 61 …The fifteenth witness is John Durkan, one of the three who accompanied young Hill. His testimony…
  • p. 65 …looked around the church and school, and hill and vale, mound and mearing, and saw no…
  • p. 70 …This was a boy of about fourteen years of age, named Patrick Hill—a bright, intelligent…
  • p. 71 this story in the manner already described, Hill departed, and presently a lad was brought in…

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

# CHAPTER IV.

## ARE WE SURE OF THE APPARITION?

The village of Knock is now spoken of not only in Ireland, in England, in Scotland, but in America. Letters from the most distant districts in the far-off United States of the American Continent have been received, in which detailed questions have been put respecting the "apparitions and the miracles" at Knock. It is quite impossible to answer all the inquiries made on the several points proposed, regarding the general subject and the detailed events that have been narrated, and which, it is stated, have actually taken place. The events can well be grouped under two headings, namely, those respecting the Apparition seen on August 21st, 1879, the eve of the octave of the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and those that tell of the "miracles" that have been wrought since Christmas last. It is easy enough to deal with the question of the first Apparition, because the proofs regarding it rest on the evidence of the witnesses who assert, and even swear, that they beheld it. These are at least fifteen in number.

## Reasoning on this point.

How it could happen that fifteen persons of different ages, and of different ways of thinking and of living—persons differing in age, in condition, in place, and position, could, without any apparent reason, conspire to say they all saw a certain thing which, in the opinions of those who do not credit their narration, they did not see, and that they were under that delusion (not one, but all of them) that they saw it, some for one hour, some for an hour and a half, some for

About this file

Document, cited by the archive. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 91 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.