Up to the end of a year there was light; that was a long day of peace!
14. Patrick’s soul from his body after labours was severed;
God’s angels on the first night kept watch thereon unceasingly.
15. Patrick, without sign of pride, much good he meditated;
To be in the service of Mary’s son, it was a pious fortune to which he was born.
It has been supposed that the author of the hymn made use of Muirchu’s Life. This was suggested by Loofs (Ant. Britonum Scotorumque Ecclesiae, 42 sqq.), and seems plausible not only on account of the resemblances, but also because Muirchu was connected with Aed of Slébte, and the attribution of the hymn to Fíacc of Slébte suggests that it was composed there. But there are some statements which are not found in Muirchu (I have indicated them by italics in the foregoing text), so that Muirchu’s Life cannot, in any case, have been the only source. There is no reason why the author might not have used some of the documents which supplied Muirchu himself with information.[317] If so, the hymn would be an independent testimony for that lost material (whereas if it is based on Muirchu it has no historical importance whatever, except in so far as the few statements not found in Muirchu might depend on an older source than any that we possess). In support of this view it may be urged that, if the writer’s main source was Muirchu, it is strange that he has not embodied any of the portions of Muirchu which rest on Ulidian tradition. This circumstance suggests that he used the documents on which the other parts of Muirchu’s Life were based. It is perhaps significant that the statements concerning Cothraige in 3 and the Tyrrhene islands in 6 are found in Tírechán, in connexion with the fact that one source of Muirchu had also been used by Tírechán.
[It may be noted that, in the interpolated stanza 26, the hymn, which is to be a lorica (lurech) to every one, is not the Hymn of Secundinus, as has been generally held, but, as Professor Atkinson has pointed out (Lib. Hymn. ii. xliv.) the “lorica” of Patrick.]
The most recent editions of the Hymn with the glosses are that of Atkinson (Liber Hymnorum, i. 96 sqq.; English version in ii. 31 sqq.), and that of Stokes and Strachan (Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, ii. 307 sqq.), who date the hymn about A.D. 800.
5. Early Acts in Irish
It has appeared in the foregoing pages that an analysis of Tírechán, Muirchu, and the Additional Notices discloses the existence of an early Patrician literature in Irish, of which a writer in the seventh century could avail himself; and it may be useful to emphasise this important conclusion by stating it under a distinct heading.