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This book was prepared and edited by John MacPhilpin of Tuam and published in Dublin by M. H. Gill & Son in 1880. It reprints Tuam News reports on the apparition of the Blessed Virgin, St. Joseph and St. John the Evangelist, which about twenty people saw on the south gable of Knock chapel, County Mayo, on 21 August 1879. It also gives the witnesses' official depositions, which a commission of priests appointed by the Archbishop of Tuam judged trustworthy. It lists cures recorded in Archdeacon Cavanagh's diary.
“Hill”15 pages
26 a man on four hundred square feet of surface for some hours in the light of day, and the darkness of night, and that with pencils of rays of light invisible from artificial sources of illumination. Neither is the phosphorus theory of any avail. One would require an immense amount of phosphorus to daub the whole gable of a church with it. The phosphorus would ignite in the daytime in the hands of any unskilled, nay, the most cautious artist. Then, again, the light of phosphorus could not be seen distinctly thirty yards off ; especially it could not be seen at daytime. Again, it could not present, with its ever-fitful flame, accu rately and minutely denned features. Some of the witnesses testify that they beheld the very eye-balls of the figures, which, as Patrick Hill testifies, appeared to him to be those of liv ing beings ; he saw, he says, not only the eyes, but the iris and the pupil. Although some of the witnesses have de scribed the figures as statues, yet they assert that those they saw were like living beings, as their eyes, and the brightness of their eyes, ever showed. They were statue-like only in this respect, that the figures did not speak. It is in that respect the witnesses bear testimony to their statue or ghost like appearance. Phosphoric light is ever fitful and fluctuat ing, like the light of a reflected moon on the disturbed sur face of a rippling lake. It is never even, nor at rest. But in the Apparition there was no rippling, or ever and constant changing of light. The figures and likenesses that were seen were settled ; they presented an accurate outline, and were constant and continuous in their pose for two hours and a half. Add to all this that the lights were beheld at a distance of over half a mile ; phosphoric lights cannot be seen thirty yards off—above all, they cannot be seen in day light. But this is certain, that while water is being poured on a surface on which phosphorus is being rubbed, no light
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