A Blessing to be said at Bedtime.
This night I will lay me down to sleep
In the companionship of the Virgin and her Son,
Even with the mother of my King,
Who protects me from all evil.
I will not lie down to sleep with evil,
Nor shall evil lie down to sleep with me;
But I shall sleep with God.
And with me shall God lie down.
His good right arm be under my head;
The cross of the Nine Angels be about me,
From the top of my head
Even to the soles of my feet.
I supplicate Peter, I supplicate Paul,
I supplicate Mary the Virgin and her Son,
And I supplicate the twelve Apostles,
That evil befall me not this night, with their consent.
Good and ever glorious Mary,
And Thou, Son of the sweet-savoured Virgin,
Protect me this night from all the pains of darkness!
And thou, Michael, ever beneficent, be about for the safe keeping of my soul!
Apart from the appropriateness and almost absolute faultlessness of the rhythm and language in which they are couched, nothing about these old Hebridean “Blessings” seems to us so beautiful and striking as the nearness with which they bring Heaven and its active, ceaseless beneficence, to the very firesides and commonest affairs of men. Nothing is too small or insignificant to be placed, not in a general way observe, but in the most literal particular sense, under the Divine guardianship. With these old people, in their ocean-girt and storm-swept islands, God was not merely the creator, but the ever present, ever near father, protector, and friend, while to them His angels were in very truth “ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation”—not merely in spiritual matters, we are to remark, but in all the affairs of common, every-day life. Since the days of the ancient Hebrews, nowhere shall we find so firm and fixed a belief in a direct and constant intercourse and communion for good between Heaven and Earth.
The following “Blessing,” to be said over cattle when being led to pasture of a morning, is exceedingly interesting:—