The hills above are high, the glen is deep;
A singing brooklet lulls the glen to sleep –
A holy glen: for Mass was offered there
When churches, but not worshippers, were rare.

Churches and schools were luxuries allowed
But seldom to our sires by tyrants proud;
No wonder then, our fathers deemed it good
To raise an altar in this solitude.

‘Twas a cold place for Mass in this cold clime,
And yet a meet place in the penal time;
The lone hills sheltered it from storms un-kind –
And from worse tyrants than the winter wind.

A quaint old chapel this! A muddy floor;
And heaven the only roof that arched it o’er;
Its walls – green slopes that leaned against the land:
A house of God raised up by God’s own Hand.

Gaze we in fancy on a scene sublime –
A Sabbath morning in the winter time;
Poor toil-worn peasant from the hills around,
Kneeling on “knee-stones” on the snowclad ground.

They have no heating apparatus there;
Nor warm nor costly are the clothes they wear;
Naught save the fire of Faith is there to warm
Hearts raised to God, oblivious of the storm.

Passed has that scene as earthly scenes all pass –
No throng is there to-day, no priest, no Mass;
But the calm hills still guard the holy nook,
And still unwearied goes the singing brook.

(Footnote by P.D. – We all know the hymn ‘Ive found a Treasure in a Field’, it brings to mind finding a treasure – a pot of Gold in a big field in a valley like the fertile land of Clogher Valley or a verdant plain in Meath (good land). But our ancestors found a treasure ‘The Eucharist – the Mass’ in the corner of a wild secluded glen in Altamuskin {Glennaffrin} and later they came to worship in the old Altar Glen for generations before the Chapel of Dunmoyle was built in the 1860’s. – Granda wrote a poem – GLENNANAFFRIN {The Old Altar at Altamuskin, Dunmoyle}.)  Matha Jack (Mullin – granda’s uncle) was the last survivor who had worshiped at the old Altar at Altamuskin regularly.