From the 9th Century Rule of the Monastery of Tallaght, in Ireland, that prayer for the departed helps:
“There was a certain layman and his wife in Mugdoirn living under the spiritual guidance of [St] Eocha ua Tuathail [Abbot of Lugmhada, +820], in lawful wedlock, and with ten sons. Afterwards his enemies murdered him, and all the lay folk, seeing this, said: ‘What did it avail him to live virtuously?’ [St] Eochu came at once to [St] Dublitir [+795] and set forth his case to him; and [St] Dublitir told him to distribute to the poor half or a third of the layman’s substance, and that one of his sons should offer to God his body and soul, and should observer on his behalf the penance which he would have performed, the pittance and vigil and labour, to the end of seven years; and that his wife also should do penance on her own behalf and on her husband’s for the same period. Then all this was done, and his son and wife came to Communion that day seven years. Then he [the murdered layman] appeared on that night to [St.] Dublitir seven years after his death, and… [lacuna in manuscript]..was his comeliness and he had glistering rainment about him. The he gave [St] Dublitir a blessing for the help th at had been given him, and said to him, ‘In this night the Lord hath taken pity on me and hath brought me out of hell [Hades] to the Kingdom of Heaven.’ And [St] Dublitir said: ‘Who art thou?’ [and the man replied:] ‘I am a wretched man: [St] Eochu hath thought upon me.’ Afterwards he appeared on the self-same night to [St] Eochu, and to his [i.e. to his own] son and wife and blessed them and said the same words to them.”
https://archive.org/details/monasteryoftalla29gwynuoft
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