In the _Liber Hymnorum_, however, there is a short hymn in Gaelic entitled Adamnan’s Prayer. It may be read in Dr. Stokes’ _Goidelica_. And in the Leabhar Na h’Uidhre there is a more lengthy production known as “Fis Adhamhnain.” It is in the form of a sermon, and may have been written down some two hundred years after the abbot’s time. In this remarkable vision Adamnan figures as “the high sage of the western world,” and like Aeneas or Dante, he is privileged on the festival of St. John the Baptist to visit heaven and hell. The scenes he beheld are depicted in the original Gaelic with a realism and power of vivid imaginary detail that puts even Thomas Boston in the shade. As Dante found his Florentine enemies in not too comfortable circumstances in the Inferno, so Adamnan is here represented as seeing the Aircinnich—the lay administrators of the church lands, who too often abused their trust, in similar dool. But this sentiment alone is sufficient to show that the composition is of later date than Adamnan’s day, for such Aircinnich had yet to arise, and the broad acres they mismanaged. It is said that at the time of the great Synod in 697 the public mind had for long been kept in such a state of suspense and alarm by the prevailing pestilences and portents, that the report of the abbot having some such vision made it so susceptible to his influence that he had far less difficulty in carrying into effect his revolutionary measures than he would have had in ordinary circumstances. But all these things—writings and traditions alike—tend to show how this quiet, intellectual, studious, pious, and—from our point of view—amazingly credulous, yet influential scholar, impressed his own and succeeding ages.