This poem was composed to Richard de Burgh, second Earl of Clanrickarde, most likely on the occasion of his inauguration in 1550. The apologue of the poem, which recounts the adventures of Hercules in the Island of the Purple Sheep, is drawn from Stair Ercuil ocus a bás, a late fifteenth-century adaptation by Uilleam Mac an Leagha of either Raoul Lefèvre's Le recoeil des histoires de Troyes or William Caxton's English translation, The recuyell of the historyes of Troye. The apologue was previously edited from RIA MS 3 C 13, along with a glossary but no translation, by Eleanor Knott in Irish syllabic poetry, and a 'lightly edited' transcription was published in A bardic miscellany. A complete edition of the poem, based on the Book of the O'Connor Donn's text, is presented here for the first time, along with an introduction, notes on sources and analogues with other bardic poems, and an English translation.