original manuscript is dated to before 800 based on the inclusion of prayers for St. Ruain (d. 792); his monastery in Tallaght, in today's County Dublin is the most likely place where it was first copied. The version of the mass used is thought to be older than the manuscript, and reflects 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 and added to the mixture of Gallican and Roman elements found in the text of the prayers. A later scribe, working before 1033, decorated the plain initials with heads and other designs using a pointed pen. The dating to before 1033 for the later phase is assumed as that was the year Find Ua Dungalaig, the presumed commissioner of the shrine of the missal, died. A few initials are decorated, notably on f 1, where extracts from John contain a "crude" full page evangelist portrait the saint with his symbol of the eagle, decorated with Insular interlace. The lower end of the page contains the body of an elongated animal. Apart from the eagle, it is rather similar to the portrait of John in the Book of Mulling, and its style has been compared to the 8th century Lindisfarne Gospels. Other folio initials are of the "knotted wire" type (f 48r & 51r). Two folios show human faces within the letters O (f 12v) and D, with the latter resembling anthropomorphic designs in the Book of Kells. The manuscript's small size indicates that it was intended to be portable "pocket book" that could be carried by a cleric for mass in nearby towns and villages, or used at baptisms or for last rites. Cumdach (book-shrine) The manuscript retains its cumdach or book-shrine, a distinctively Irish form of reliquary case for books associated with an important religious figure; this is one of only five early examples. It is a box with metalwork plaques attached with nails to a wooden core of oak. The metalwork is elaborately decorated, with some animal and human figures, and one face and the sides probably date to between 1026 and 1033, on the basis of inscriptions recording its donation and making, while the other face is later, and can be dated to about 1375, again from