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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.
“Nevers”12 pages
62 present at once ; but on no day of the week is the place de serted, and it assuredly afforded an extraordinary spectacle last Wednesday. About ten paces from the gable stands a small roughly-constructed pen, wherein pilgrims who no longer require the aid of sticks and crutches deposit them before leaving. Scores of these discarded props to tottering feet were lying there ; and a few others, besides two very battered umbrellas, were suspended from the boards that pro tect the sacred wall. It is needless to say that the wall itself, boarded though it be, excites the utmost reverence. I saw a score of people kneeling before it repeating prayers, some of them knowing the spot on which they believe the Virgin ap peared ; while others had brought sick children, upon whom they lavished attention in the intervals of devotion. Others, again, wandered round and round the chapel, telling their beads as they went—an act of faith, so I was assured, al together self-imposed. Yet others, mostly afflicted with diseases, stood about in the road, or enclosure, waiting, like some at the Pool of Bethesda long ago, " for the moving of the waters." Night and day they wait, filling the chapel during the dark hours, and praying there so as that the sound of their voices can be heard far down the road. At least two hundred persons were in the sacred edifice when I entered. The interior is poor of aspect. Beyond the unpretending altar, and two or three small windows filled with stained glass, there are no attempts at decorations, and very ineffec tive ones at convenience, since all the" benches in the place would not seat more than thirty people. The floor is roughly flagged and full of holes made by devotees who, in their eagerness to possess some blessed substance, have dug be neath the level of the stones. But, holes or no holes, the pilgrims covered almost the entire area, from the altar rails to the western door and from side to side of the transept, their
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