When I saw a 1912 article entitled 'An Old Irish prayer' in the The Sacred Heart Review I was expecting to find an early medieval text, but instead found the familiar bedtime prayer, 'Now I lay me down to sleep', known to generations of children but not, as far as I was aware, one with any particular Irish associations. But the anonymous writer claims that this prayer originated in Ireland, at 'the golden time when Eire was Eirie' no less. I haven't myself come across the 'wilder surmises' linking Saints Patrick, Colum Cille and Aidan with the spread of the prayer, but its survival is attributed to 'those conservators of tradition, the Irish peasants'. Having argued for the prayer's Irish roots we suddenly find ourselves at the court of the Norman king William Rufus, where a pious child recites the prayer as the wicked monarch lies ill. The author ends by giving us a modern English version followed by an alleged 'ancient Irish' version. I suspect that this prayer is part of a later medieval European-wide tradition in which Ireland was represented, but was not the original source. The collection of traditional prayers by An t-Athair Diarmuid Ó Laoghaire S.J., Ár bPaidreacha Dúchais, includes an Irish language version, as does the Abhráin diadha chúige Connacht, of Douglas Hyde. So, I will append one of the Irish versions (with updated modern spelling) from Hyde's 1906 Religious Songs of Connacht, along with his literal and poetic translations:
An Old Irish Prayer.
The universal night
prayer of the children, beginning "Now I lay me down to sleep " is only
one thousand years older than Protestantism, although many of the
misinformed appear to believe that it is of Protestant origin, says the
Dublin Irish Catholic. The old, old Catholic prayer runs back to the
golden time when Eire was Eirie, and there have been wilder surmises
than this: that St. Patrick taught it to the children of the High King
at Tara, that St. Columbkille bore it to Iona, and that St. Aidan
carried it from Iona to England when he founded Lindisfarne Abbey. In
one form or other the little prayer has descended through the ages from
mother to child among those conservators of tradition, the Irish
peasants. In the days of that precursor of Henry VIII the irreligious,
dissolute William Rufus -that is to say, in the eleventh century— the
old baby prayer was suddenly presented at Court. It was
at a time when the corrupt monarch lay dangerously ill. He had banished
St. Anselm and Anselm's clergy, and in the hour of mortal need he was
without spiritual help. Trembling for the salvation of his soul, he
commanded his ungodly courtiers to kneel and pray for him. They knelt
and muttered some jargon. The king would not be satisfied: he ordered
them to pray audibly. But these, his chosen friends and flatterers, were
of his own impious stripe; not one of them could say an intelligent
prayer. At last they bethought them of a little page who had but
lately come to Court, and who had been observed and mocked at his night
prayers. The child was brought to the king's bedside; he knelt and
prayed:—
The modern English form is very much shorter: —
One ancient Irish version runs thus: —
The Sacred Heart Review, Volume 47, Number 14, 23 March 1912.
Ceithre Phosta ar mo Leaba
I have heard an English verse very like this. It ran thus if I remember right: —
Douglas Hyde, Abhráin diadha chúige Connacht, -Religious Songs of Connacht II, (London and Dublin, 1906), 216-7.
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