A second Patrician piece in the Book of Hymns is Fiacc of Sletty’s metrical life—also called a Hymn. It is purely biographical, and written after St. Patrick’s death, according to the introduction in the above ancient MS. Here we are told in Gaelic, with Latin words curiously interpolated, that Patrick said to Dubthach, chief bard of Ireland, “‘Seek for me a man of rank, of good race, well-moralled, one wife and one child with him only.’ ‘Why dost thou seek that, to wit a man of that kind?’ said Dubthach. ‘For him to go into orders,’ said Patrick. ‘Fiacc is that,’ said Dubthach, ‘and he has gone on a circuit in Connaught.’ Now while they were talking, it is then came Fiacc from his circuit. ‘There,’ said Dubthach, ‘is he of whom we spake.’ ‘Though he be,’ said Patrick, ‘yet what we say may not be pleasing to him.’ ‘Let a trial be made to tonsure me,’ said Dubthach, ‘so that Fiacc may see.’ So when Fiacc saw he asked, ‘Wherefore is the trial made?’ ‘To tonsure Dubthach,’ say they. ‘That is idle,’ said he, ‘for there is not in Ireland a poet his equal.’ ‘Thou wouldst be taken in his place,’ said Patrick. ‘My loss to Ireland,’ says Fiacc, ‘is less than Dubthach’s (would be).’ So Patrick shore his beard from Fiacc then, and great glee came upon him thereafter, so that he read all the ecclesiastical ordo in one night—or fifteen days, as some say—and so that a bishop’s rank was conferred on him, and so that it is he who is Archbishop of Leinster thenceforward and his successor after him.” Dr. Todd thinks it impossible to attribute so high an antiquity to the Hymn as Fiacc’s own time, since it contains an allusion to the desolation of Tara. Colgan 250 years previously met the difficulty by regarding the latter reference as prophetic. We must not omit a very curious prophecy regarding St. Patrick which the Scholiast on Fiacc’s Hymn has preserved. It is in the copy of the Book of Hymns now in the convent of St. Isidore at Rome, a MS. of the eleventh or twelfth century. From internal evidence it may be recognised that the stanza cannot be older than the beginning of the seventh century, but it is written in a very ancient dialect of the Gaelic, and purported to be an old-time prediction by a pagan Druid. Ticfa tailcend Tar muir murcend, A brat tollcend, A crand chromcend, A mias in iarthur a thigi, Frisgerad a muinter uili Amen, Amen. He comes, he comes, with shaven crown, from off the storm-toss’d sea, His garment pierced at the neck, with crook-like staff comes he, Far in his house, at its east end, his cups and patens lie, His people answer to his voice. Amen, Amen, they cry. Amen, Amen.