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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. 47 …I noticed his whiskers; they appeared slightly gray; there was a line or dark mearing between
  • p. 52 …represented the saint as somewhat aged, with gray whiskers and grayish hair. The third figure appeared…
  • p. 61 …Joseph were an iron gray; the Blessed Virgin had on a white cloak. The reason I…

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

the Blessed Virgin Mary and other saints at the south gable of the chapel. I went with him. When I reached the south side of the chapel, we saw the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary, having her hands uplifted, and her eyes turned up towards heaven, as if in prayer, and she was dressed in a white cloak. To her right I saw St. Joseph, and on her left St. John, just as the other persons had told me before I came. I saw an altar there, and figures representing saints and angels traced or carved on the lower part of it. The night was dark and raining, and yet these images, in the dark night, appeared with bright lights as plain as under the noon-day sun. At the time it was pitch dark and raining heavily, and yet there was not one drop of rain near the images. There was a mitre on St. John's head, nearly like to that which a bishop wears. I was there only for one quarter of an hour; at the time I was there, five other persons were in it with me, looking on at the Apparition. All the figures appeared clothed in white; the whiskers on St. Joseph were an iron gray; the Blessed Virgin had on a white cloak. The reason I had for calling the third figure St. John is because some saw his statue or his likeness at Lekanvey parish chapel.

The fifteenth witness is John Durkan, one of the three who accompanied young Hill. His testimony is the same as that given by each of the Beirnes.

NOTE.—The Beirne family spell their name Beirn, or Beirne : correspondents spell the name "Byrne," which is in sound the same.

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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.