The local people of Cavan have a firm belief that a little earth from the grave of St. Mogue will , if you carry it on your person, protect you from death by drowning, fire, air or road crash. Mary's mother gave her a little bag of this earth before Mary set out to sail on Titanic. This is the 1952 account Mary gave the local newspaper..
" We left Cobh on Wed. for New York and everything was grand. I was fast asleep in my cabin, a three-tiered affair which I shared with two others from Virginia (an Irish town). We were awakened Sunday night and thrown out of our bunks by the shock of a collision. But we were not at all afraid for everything was silent, the lights burned brightly..in fact, we felt no cause for alarm. But outside our door we heard a rising clamour and when we went out, we found the passages and corridors full of running people. That was about midnight, if I remember right and we went up to the boat deck, pushing our way through lines of linked sailors and some armed men, who were shouting "Women and children first!" Somebody told us to go back for our lifebelts and with difficulty we went back to our cabin, found them over the door, put them on and fought our way back again. We went from lifeboat to lifeboat, all of which seemed packed and which one by one were being lowered down into the water. I knew how near the water was for I had actually seen it washing down the corridor as we went down for our lifebelts. We were shoved into the last of the boats to leave, and had to watch drowning men being beaten with oars to prevent them from overturning the boat we were in, watched the lights go out one by one in the huge ship sliding to her grave on the starlit water...and saw the last long slow death struggle of the pride of Queen's Island...the greatest and newest ship in the world. Next day we were picked up by the
Carpathia. I am one out of 712 saved out of a total of 2,201. Sewn in my clothes from the time I left my native Corlough here in Cavan, I had carried a little earth from St. Mogue's grave. I have it still hidden in the rafters of my home.."