A couple of days ago we looked at an obscure female saint, Lassar, who shares her feast day with the well-known Saint Carthage of Lismore. Today we meet the same name in another form in the person of a seventh-century abbot of Bangor, who shares his May 16th commemoration with the famous Saint Brendan the Navigator. Our abbot’s name, Mac Laisre, describes him as the son of Lasre and Canon O’Hanlon assembles the evidence from the calendars and annals for his feast day below. One source he doesn’t mention though is the poem preserved in the Bangor Antiphonary on ‘The Commemoration of our Abbots’. The poem, consisting of eight strophes of eight lines each, lists the abbots beginning with the founder Saint Comgall, whose feast is also celebrated in the month of May,  describing how Christ has endowed them with heavenly virtues. It begins:

Sancta sanctorum opera
Patrum, fratres, fortissima,
Benchorensi in optimo
Fundatorum aeclesia,
Abbatum eminentia,
Numerum, tempra, nomina,
Sine fine fulgentia,
Audite, magna mereta ;
Quos convocavit Dominus
Caelorum regni sedibus. 

The holy, valiant deeds
Of sacred Fathers,
Based on the matchless
Church of Benchor;
The noble deeds of abbots
Their number, times, and names,
Of never-ending lustre.
Hear, brothers; great their deserts,
Whom the Lord hath gathered
To the mansions of his heavenly kingdom.

Of our saint it says:

Inlustravit Maclaisreum,
Kapud abbatum omnium 

He rendered Maclaisre illustrious,
The chief of all abbots;

[Text and Translation from Rev William Reeves, ‘The Antiphonary of Bangor,’ in Ulster Journal of Archaeology, Vol.1 (1853), 168-179.]