Manuscript
There are 67 folios, measuring 55⁄8 by 41⁄2 inches (14 by 11 cm). Only the last three folios are in Irish. These contain a short treatise on the Mass and, on the last page, folio 67v, three spells "against injury to the eye, thorns, and disease of the urine". The Latin sections contain extracts from the Gospel of John (f 1), which were probably from another manuscript, then the order of Mass and some special Masses (f 12), the Order of Baptism and of Communion for the newly-baptised (f 46v), and the Order for the Visitation of the Sick and Last Rites (f 60). The version of the mass used is thought to be older than the manuscript, and reflect the early usage of Celtic Christianity. The five original scribes of the Missal wrote in an angular majuscule script. A more cursive hand was used by a scribe signing himself Moél Caích (f 37) who revised several pages. A few initials are decorated, notably the one on f 1, and the extracts from John contain a "crude" full page evangelist portrait of John with his symbol of the eagle, unusually placed at the end (f 11v), with panels of Insular interlace on either side of the standing figure, and the eagle above. Apart from the eagle, it is rather similar to the portrait of John in the Book of Mulling.
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“The manuscript lay like a dust-rag on his desk, and Eitel found, as he had found before, that the difficulty of art was that it forced a man back on his life, and each time the task was more difficult and distasteful.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)