It is the kind of place-name that raises an immediate question: an altar to what, or whom, and by whose reckoning? In rural Ireland, the word appears on the landscape in several guises. It may refer to a Mass rock, the flat stones used as makeshift altars during the Penal era when Catholic worship was outlawed and priests said Mass in the open air, often in remote or sheltered spots away from the road. It may equally point to something older, a natural or arranged stone formation that later generations interpreted through a religious lens. The name alone is the record here, and names in Irish townlands rarely arrive without some weight of use or memory behind them.