Stokes, Revue Celtique 4 (1880) — translated from the Irish.

¹ God’s blessing upon all the hearers.

² Let every one of them apart give his mind and his attention earnestly to the tidings of the day of doom — namely, how the Lord will make welcome with the saints and the righteous at the inhabiting of the heavenly kingdom, and how he will make welcome with the sinners and the unrighteous at their driving into hell.

³ Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, the Saviour of all the world, the third person of the noble Godhead, co-eternal and co-substantial with the Father and with the Holy Spirit — it is he that told these tidings a little before his passion, to reveal the description that should befall himself on doomsday with his saints and his righteous, and to strengthen his apostles and his disciples lest grief for his passion should seize them. For he knew that the time of his passion was near at hand.

⁴ Matthew son of Alpheus, the Hebrew scholar, one of the twelve whom Jesus chose into his household, the fourth man who wrote the divine gospel — it is he that wrote and arranged these tidings of doomsday, even as he heard them from the lips of his master Jesus, so that he left them in memory with the church, saying on this wise:

⁵ When the Son of God and of man shall come in one person, with honour and with majesty, and all his angels with him, he will then sit upon his royal throne and upon the seat of his majesty; and there all men will be gathered in his presence, and he will make their division and their separation thereafter. He will order his saints and his righteous to his right hand; but he will order the sinners and the unrighteous to his left. Then the King will say to the company that shall be on his right hand: “Come, you blessed, inherit the kingdom of my Father which was prepared for you from the beginning of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave me food; I was thirsty, and you gave me drink; I was in need of a guest-house, and you gave me hospitality; I was without clothing, and you gave me clothing; I was sick, and you came to visit me; I was in bondage, and you came to loose me and to help me.”

⁶ Then the righteous will make this answer to the Lord: “Lord,” say they, “when did we see you hungry or thirsty, and we gave you food and drink? When did we see you in need of a guest-house or without clothing, and we gave you hospitality and clothing? Or when did we see you sick or in bondage, and we came to visit you and to loose you?”

⁷ Now this is the answer that the Lord will give to the righteous: “Every time,” says he, “that you did good to the poor in my name, it was upon me that you did it.”

⁸ Those then are the six divisions of mercy whereby the heavenly kingdom is purchased. Those are the six cleansing doors through which comes the light of eternal life into the church. Those are the six steps whereby the saints and the righteous mount up to heaven.

⁹ The Lord will also say to the company that shall be on his left hand this bitter and terrible speech, that is, to the folk that did not fulfil his will and his commandment; and this is what he will say to them in putting them into hell: “Depart from me, you cursed, and go into the everlasting fire that was prepared for the devil and for his evil household. For I was hungry and thirsty, and you gave me neither food nor drink; I was in need of a guest-house and of clothing, and you gave me neither hospitality nor clothing; I was sick and in bondage, and you came not to visit me nor to loose me.”

¹⁰ Then the impious will make this answer to the Lord: “Lord,” say they, “when did we see you hungry, or thirsty, or in need of a guest-house, or without clothing, or sick, or in bondage, and we did you not service and obedience?”

¹¹ Then the Lord will make answer to them: “Every time,” says he, “that you did not good to the poor in my name, it was upon me that you did it not.”

¹² Those, then, are the six chief things whereby hell is won. Thereafter the unrighteous will be cast headlong into the pain of hell and into everlasting punishment; but the saints and the righteous will go into the eternal life to inhabit heaven together with God and his angels for ever and ever.

¹³ It is asked in the holy scripture from which the Lord will come to the judgement of doom, and how he will come, and for what cause he will come.

¹⁴ Now it is certain that the Lord will come from heaven to the judgement of doom, as the royal prophet David son of Jesse certifies. But how he will come, the same prophet certifies, and this is what he says: “It will be manifest,” says he, “that the Lord will come to the judgement, and he will not be silent.”

¹⁵ And there will be a great fire blazing in his presence, and a mighty storm round about him on every side. Now the reason therefore the Lord will come to the judgement is to pass judgement upon the human race, both the living and the dead; as the same royal prophet says: “The households of heaven and earth,” says he, “will be gathered in the presence of the Lord on doomsday.”

¹⁶ And it is certain that four companies of the human race will be made on doomsday.

¹⁷ One company of them will be brought to judgement, and after their judgement they will go to pain and torment. To them the Lord will say this terrible speech in driving them from him: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire that was prepared for the devil and his evil household.” Those are they that do not perform the good they promise with their lips. The name of that company in the scripture is mali non ualde, that is, the evil that are not very evil.

¹⁸ Another company of them will not be brought to judgement at all, but will go straightaway without any judgement upon them to hell, and will be tortured thereafter for ever and ever without God’s mercy coming to help them; for they put no punishment or law or rule upon the doing of their sin and their evil habits here, but every greater evil they can commit against God and man, that is what they do. The name of that company is mali ualde, that is, they that are the worst of the human race.

¹⁹ Another company of them will be brought to judgement, and after their judgement they will go to reward. Those are they that here make earnest repentance with contrition of heart, and heal their former evils with good customs and righteous deeds, and who give alms of food and clothing to the poor in honour of the Lord, so that those blot out the sins they committed before, and the Lord beyond does not remember against them the evils they did here. To them the Lord will say on doomsday in calling them to him to heaven: “Come now, you blessed, to inhabit the heavenly kingdom.” And the name of that company in the holy scripture is boni non ualde, that is, the good that are not very good.

²⁰ But another company of them will not be brought to judgement at all, but will go straightaway without any judgement to heaven and to chosen rewards. With them it is not enough to perform whatever good the divine scripture enjoins them to do so that they may merit through their virtues and their righteous deeds […] and they do more good than is enjoined upon them in the divine commandments. To them it is that Jesus promised and foretold this great good which is written in the gospel, when he said to them in leading them to him in the great assembly of doomsday: “For you have left behind you,” says Jesus, “every good that you had in the world, and you came in my following and in my company. Come now […] that you may be together with me upon twelve thrones without […] and it is you that shall judge the human race […].” [gap: one leaf lost]

²¹… to inhabit hell for ever and ever. And it is they that shall be in the camps and fortresses of the devil. And they shall be sundered from the joy of this world that they loved, and from the countenances of the household of heaven — of the angels and the saints and the righteous — being a thousand years in the fire of doom. For that is the length of the day of doom, as the commentators of the holy canon tell.

²² Unhappy then will be the lot of those sinners. They shall find neither drink nor food, but perpetual hunger and excessive thirst and excessive cold. They shall be brought then to the devil’s house with the sound of reproach, with heavy everlasting sighs. Woeful will be the cry and the lamentation and the shrieking, the grief and the beating of hands, of the folk of sinners there, as they are dragged to the pain of hell; but that will be a repentance too late that avails nothing, for their prayer will not be heard there. For they did not take heed at first, while they were here in the dwelling-places of their bodies and their souls. They will be shut in then with the three locks of the sinners, namely, the shutting of hell upon them for ever, and the shutting of their eyes from the world to which they gave their love, and the shutting of the heavenly kingdom against them. Then they will be set, most pitiless, upon searing fires in the presence of the king of the torments in the valley of pains, where there will be heavy torments for them, namely: death without life, a dark fire, a life mournful, sorrowful, unclean; a place where there will be many sharp hounds, bloody-mouthed, wide-eared, clawed, sharp-pawed at their sides, and fierce rough serpents striking at them, and venomous snakes darting about the city of the devil, and fierce lions tearing, and a multitude of pits and of black ditches. A place where there will be winged birds with iron talons and talons of power, and foul stormy lakes, cold and hellish. Dark fires burning ever. Red flags under their feet. Swords hacking. Cats scratching and gnawing. Demons torturing. Wounds without cure. Flame without extinction. Seizing upon tongues. Choking upon throats. Torment upon heads. Shrieking and seizing upon voices. Binding upon soles. A place where beside every evil there will be the monstrous many-headed beast with red scorching snouts — not to be described: a hundred necks upon it, and a hundred heads upon every neck, and five hundred teeth in every head, a hundred hands upon it, and a hundred palms upon every hand, and a hundred talons upon every palm. A place where men shall be without comely faces, without friends, in thirst, in hunger, in excessive cold, in excessive heat, in want of every goodness and in the fulness of every evil, in the fellowship and union of the demons and the household of hell. And there will be there wailing and shrieking, weeping and screaming, groaning and grating of every mouth, and a curse unceasing from the sinners upon him who beguiled them, that is, upon the devil. For it is he that brings them to suffer the pain of every evil they did through his seducing. And a curse also from him upon his monks around him, that is, upon the sinners, for the greater is his own pain for every evil they did through his seducing them and seducing every evil.

²³ Now terrible and hideous is that prison which the Lord made for the devil with his demons, that is, hell. Low indeed and deep is its situation. For though a millstone were cast into the mouth of hell, it would not reach its bottom sooner than at the end of a thousand years. And the journey of a soul after leaving the body is thirty years from its top to its bottom, as has been felt by certain others. Strong is the compass of that prison. Ghastly, dreadful, dangerous, tearful is it. Dark and black-horrible is its form. A mass of red-hot metal for the tormenting of every soul that is tormented. A furnace to burn. A scourge to smite. A sword to mangle. A night to darken. Smoke to smother. A gallows to torture. A sword to avenge. A terrible weapon to wound and to flay. A roaring of pains. A shower of torments. A drowning, a plaguing. A straining, a crushing. A filling, an emptying. A hatred, a destruction. A burning, a swallowing. It is high, it is low. It is exceeding cold, it is exceeding hot. It is narrow, it is wide. Great is the stench of its broth-hall.

²⁴ And though a man were cast into seven ages, and were a thousand years in each age of them, he would not have told more than one-and-twentieth part of the evils of hell. Yet those are but the chief examples of hell with its pains. No more, though the kingship of all the world from sunrise to sunset were his, should it be that dwelling and the race that inhabits that prison.

²⁵ But the saints and the righteous who fulfilled the commandments of the Lord and his teaching will be called with joy, with honour, with worship, into the eternal life on God’s right hand for ever and ever — namely, the folk of meekness and of kindness, of almsgiving and of mercy and of every righteous deed besides, the folk of virginity and of penitence and of faithful widowhood in God. Then

²⁶ there will be a mighty peal and a wondrous sound of the pure souls stepping upon the right hand of their King and their Lord into the heavenly kingdom in the ranks of the King of heaven and earth and hell. A place where there is the light that surpasses every light, every lustre, without darkness, without gloom. Life everlasting without death, a shout of joy without sorrow. Health without sickness, youth without old age, peace without strife, tranquillity without trouble, freedom without toil, without sorrow, without lack of food or clothing or sleep, holiness without defect, without harm. The joyful unity of angels. The choirs of paradise. A feasting without satiety among the nine orders of angels and the holy folk of heaven and the holy princedoms of the most high King, and among the spiritual holy ones of heaven, and the brightness of the sun, in the high noble wondrous kingdom, fair, comely, well-ordered, great, gentle, princely, noble, calm, shining, in the courts of heaven, in pleasant seats, in golden cities, in pure beds, in silver resting-places, where every man is set according to his own dignity and desert and good deeds.

²⁷ Now of the width and breadth of the heavenly kingdom it is to be told. For the swiftest bird that moves upon the earth could not traverse the plain of heaven from the beginning of the world to its end.

²⁸ Wondrous also is its permanence and its light, the beauty and the stability of that city: its calm and its sweet sound, its steadfastness, its splendour, its smoothness, its radiance, its purity, its stateliness, its whiteness, its melody, its holiness, its crystal clearness, its loveliness, its graciousness, its loftiness, its brightness, its majesty, its honour, its perfect peace, its perfect unity. No creature could tell even the first part of the goodness of that city; but only this little of it is better told than left untold.

²⁹ Happy then is he that shall be with good deeds and good works, and shall be brought to inhabit that city on doomsday. For he shall be for ever without end, without term, in the unity of the church of heaven and earth, in the unity of the noble fathers and prophets, apostles and disciples of Jesus Christ, of the saints and holy virgins of the world, of the angels and archangels of the Lord, in that unity which is nobler than every unity — in the unity of the noble Holy Trinity, Father and Son and Holy Spirit.