God of heven be with the,
Over all wimmen bliscedd thou be,
So be the bairn that is boren of the.
It is needless to observe, that in all times a very special importance has been attached by Catholic teachers to the instruction of the people in their prayers. In those early times, when the laws of the State recognised that the people had souls as well as bodies and purses, this was even made a matter of legislation, as in the canons of King Edgar the Peaceable, and the statutes of Canute, wherein every father was commanded to teach his children the Creed and the Our Father, and every man was required to know them, “if he desired to be laid in a hallowed grave, or to be thought worthy of Holy Housel.” The familiar explanation of these prayers, and of the Sunday Gospels, formed the ordinary subjects of the parish priest’s sermon; and in almost every collection of Synodal decrees we find injunctions calling on Christian men and women to learn their prayers, and say them seven times a day. The Hail Mary was enjoined, in addition, about the beginning of the thirteenth century, as we find in the constitutions of St. Richard of Chichester.
Some of the very earliest known specimens of the English, as distinguished from the Anglo-Saxon language, are fragments of hymns which appear to have been in popular use in our poor schools. One of these is commonly known as St. Godric’s hymm, and runs as follows:—
Seinte Marie, clene Virgine
Moder Jhesu Christe Nazarene,
Onfoll, scild, help thin godrich,
Onfangen bring hœle width the in godes riche.
Seinte Marie, Christes bour,