One of the many obscure Irish female saints is commemorated on August 21, but as is so often the case all we know of Saint Masse is the recording of her name on our calendars. For some reason the Martyrology of Tallaght links her name to that of another saint with whom she shares her feast day, Celba of Kilbeg.  Canon O’Hanlon also reports that in the later Martyrology of Donegal the word species is appended to her name. In a footnote he adds that one of the original translators of this seventeenth-century calendar, the Anglican scholar Bishop William Reeves, gave this explanation: ‘Dr. Reeves interprets this word as the Latin equivalent for her name, Maisse, which in Irish signifies beauty. Speciosa occurs in the Martyrology of Molanus, at the 18th March’. So, here is O’Hanlon’s brief account of the beautiful Saint Masse, taken from Volume VIII of his Lives of the Irish Saints:

St. Masse, or Maisse, Virgin.