"I beseech a favour from Thee,
That I be purified from my sins,
Through the peaceful bright-shining flock,
The royal host whom I celebrate."
Then follows a metrical preface, consisting of eighty stanzas. These verses are in the same measure[[188]] as the invocation, Englished by modern Gaedhilic scholars as "chain-verse;" that is, an arrangement of metre by which the first words of every succeeding quatrain are identical with the last words of the preceding one.
After the invocation follows a preface, the second part of this remarkable poem. In this there is a glowing account of the tortures and sufferings of the early Christian martyrs; it tells "how the names of the persecutors are forgotten, while the names of their victims are remembered with honour, veneration, and affection; how Pilate's wife is forgotten, while the Blessed Virgin Mary is remembered and honoured from the uttermost bounds of the earth to its centre." The martyrology proper, or festology, comes next, and consists of 365 quatrains, or a stanza for each day in the year.
It commences with the feast of the Circumcision:—
"At the head of the congregated saints
Let the King take the front place;
Unto the noble dispensation did submit
Christ—on the kalends of January."
St. Patrick is commemorated thus, on the 17th of March:—
"The blaze of a splendid sun,
The apostle of stainless Erinn,
Patrick, with his countless thousands,
May he shelter our wretchedness."
On the 13th of April, Bishop Tussach, one of the favourite companions of the great saint, is also mentioned as—
"The kingly bishop Tussach,
Who administered, on his arrival,
The Body of Christ, the truly powerful King,
And the Communion to Patrick."