THE MASS STONES OF LOCHABER

Of the great number of letters and documents that have survived to illustrate the history of the Catholic community in Scotland during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, only a small proportion deals with the Catholics who lived in the Highlands and in the Hebrides. We are not well informed on the practical details of the religious observance of Gaelic-speaking Catholics in Scotland and to fill out our meagre information on the subject, we have to deduce what we can from contemporary practice in the Lowlands of Scotland and also in Ireland which, throughout this period, was always in close communication with the Catholic population of north-west Scotland. Among these practical details of religious observance were the circumstances in which mass was celebrated in the Highlands and Isles during the two centuries which followed the Reformation. Travelling missionary priests were not always available, but when a priest was resident for a time in any particular district, how often did he say mass and where was mass celebrated?