I call on the holy Trinity!”
is probably not the work of the Apostle of Ireland; but as it, like that of Columcille, is in Irish, it need not detain us here. The latter begins,
“Alone am I upon the mountain,
O King of heaven, prosper my way,
And then nothing need I fear,
More than if guarded by six thousand.”
That of Lathacan, while possessing the same general character, as aiming at a Christian substitute for the Druidical charms of the pagans, is on a lower level both religiously and poetically. No less than eleven of its twenty-three quatrains are occupied with the enumeration of the parts of the human body, which are placed under divine protection, and these may be not without interest to the students of the history of physiological knowledge.
Many of the early Irish hymns are in the national language, which was at that time the vehicle of a vigorous native poetry. Of those in Latin the most beautiful is the Communion hymn,
“Sancti venite,
Christi corpus sumite,”