Meyer, Otia Merseiana 1 (1899) — Irish text, unedited

³ In our forthcoming edition of various inedited versions of Tundale’s Vision,1 Dr. Friedel and I have purposely refrained from giving an account of early Irish visionary literature, and from touching the question of its relation to the Continental literature which culminated in Dante’s poem. Nor do I propose to do so here. The time for such investigations has hardly arrived, since every search among Irish MSS. may bring new and important materials to light.

⁴ The Old Irish Vision of Hell, of which I now submit text and translation to the reader, has not hitherto been noticed,2 and it is edited here for the first time. It is found in the well-known Bodleian codex Rawlinson B. 512, fo. 44a1-44b2. Like so much of early Irish literature, it is only a fragment, containing no more than the introduction and the beginning of what was undoubtedly a complete description of Hell and Heaven. The MS. dates from the fifteenth century, but from the language I am inclined to assign the original from which our copy is derived to the Old-Irish period, to the early tenth or the latter half of the ninth century.3

⁵ Laisrén is the name of several Irish saints. The most celebrated among them was the abbot of Lethglenn, now Leighlin, co. Carlow, who died in A.D. 638, and it is not unreasonable, in the absence of any further particulars, to assume that he is the hero of our Vision. The monastery of Clúain mentioned in the introduction may be either Clonmacnois or Cloyne. Clúain Cháin in Connaught may be Clonkeen, near Athenry.

⁶ Once upon a time Laisrén went on a pilgrimage from the community of Clúain to cleanse Clúain Cháin, a church which is in the province of Connaught. He remained three days fasting while cleansing the church. At the end of the third fast sleep fell heavily upon him in the oratory, and through his sleep he heard the voice say to him: “Arise!” He did not move the first time. He heard the voice a second time. Then he lifted his head and saw the sign of the cross before his face. And he saw that the church in which he was was full of light, and it was still the dead of night. And he saw the shining figure between the crucifix and the altar.

⁷ The figure said to him: “Come to me!” The cleric’s whole body trembled from crown to sole at that voice. Then he saw a soul suddenly above his head, and he knew not by what way it had come out of the body. And he saw that the church was wide-mouthed upward towards heaven, and he saw two angels take it between them and lift it into the air.

⁸ Then he saw a host of angels before them. And he saw another host of demons with fiery hair(?) about them, and fire coming out of every limb that was in them. Three forms appeared upon the band of demons. A red-black shape upon one of them, with fiery belly-spears in his hands; a coal-black shape upon another, with fiery darts in his hands; a shaggy shape upon the third band, with fiery whiteness through them like white vapour, and fiery goads in their hands.

⁹ Then the three hosts waged a single battle to win the soul from the angels. And one of them charged the soul with a single recounting — as long as a breath — of every evil deed it had done since it was born, without change of words. The soul deemed that single recounting to last for ever; yet it spoke nothing but truth, and it promised it nothing that it had given of its confessions to its soul-friend before coming out of the body.

¹⁰ An angel answered the great host on behalf of the soul to the demon, and said: “Offer now all your charge!” The demon answered, and this is what he said: “I will not offer, I will not offer more than my due.” The angel answered: “you can not claim that of him, since his confessions and his penance were given at his soul-friend’s direction before leaving the body. Away, then,” said the angel, “you have no part in this man.” “If God’s word be true,” said the demon, “we shall not part on this wise, for this man made not himself a new creature as God bade him, saying: “except you be converted and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3).

¹¹ “God’s word is true,” said the angel, “for it was not of … that this man came to demons, for they took a share along with his fellow(?). Depart, then, at once,” said the angel. They departed from him at once.

¹² Then the angel said to the great host, to the two angels that were about him: “Bear you this man until he sees hell.” He was borne then northwards under a great glen. They journeyed with him until they saw as it were from the rising of the sun to its setting. Then they saw a great darkness like the mouth of a cave between two mountains, which they reached above. They go into the cave a long while, until they reached a great high black mountain before them at the entrance of hell, and a great glen in the side of that mountain. Such was the shape of that glen: broad below, narrow above. That, then, was the door of hell and its vestibule, the cave.

¹³ And he saw the folk of the island whereof one of them was in God’s protection in his body. They were in the middle of the glen weeping. “Woe, O God!” said the soul. “Is it because of men who come after us that you weep, O host?” — “all this host shall die after us, at the time when we shall be taken.” “Not so,” said the angel, “but everyone who is in God’s keeping while he lives after you — it is in this place their souls see it, and a high forecourt it is, unless they do penance.’ “Question: shall I say,” said the man, “to every soul whom I see here…?” “Yes,” said the angel, “that they be not obstinate in it. Say to them moreover that they do penance, for everyone who does penance and perseveres in it shall not be in this place, but shall be in a sheltered place apart from this evil, and his penance shall carry him past. And again, he who lives in righteousness — it is life he saw while he was in the body, and it is life wherein he shall be, if he remains in righteousness. Tell them, then,” said the angel, “that he who is in righteousness abide in it, for their lamentation shall not be long until death comes.

¹⁴ And he who is in God’s keeping, let him do penance, for God accepts penance if it is done from the heart steadfastly, and God’s mercy shall cleave to him.”

¹⁵ Thereupon the man’s soul went into hell itself — a sea of fire with its surf and its waves rising over him. And he saw the souls in that sea, all their heads aflame above them, weeping and lamenting without ceasing for ever. Some of the souls had fiery nails through their tongues projecting outward; some through their ears; some through their eyes.

¹⁶ He saw moreover some of them with their mouths agape, and the demons pouring fire into them with fiery forks in the likeness of the other three hosts. The man desired to know the reason of the pains. The angel answered at once, as the angel is accustomed to answer the thoughts and intents: “The folk you see here with the fiery nails through their tongues are the folk who were not often praising God or blessing and worshipping him, but were often lying and lamenting and in br [gap: three or four letters illegible] and perjury and denial and uttering pride and” […]4