“Nyghtes verray” is probably a night-were, the hobgoblin. “Were” is an old Saxon word for man, and the night-man is the ghost. In White’s “Way to the True Church,” Lond., 1624, White complains of “the prodigious ignorance” which existed among his parishioners when he entered upon his ministrations. He gives what he considers to be the “White Paternoster,” or a form of prayer used before going to bed.
“White Paternoster, Saint Peter’s brother,
What hast i the t’one hand? White booke leaves.
What hast i th’ t’other hand? Heaven gate keys.
Open heaven gates, and streike hell gates,
And let every crysan child creepe to its own mother.
White Paternoster. Amen.”
In the first edition of Wynkyn de Worde’s “Horæ Beatæ Mariæ Virginis,” 1502, a copy now in the Gough Library at Oxford has on the margin, written in a contemporary hand, “The Little Credo,” “The White Paternoster,” and “The White Benedictus,” another very curious magical formula. For an account of this see Dibdin’s “Decameron,” second day.
The “White Paternoster” is as generally in use among the peasants in France as in England. It takes various forms. In Quercy, part of our English possessions in Guyenne, it is recited nightly under another name, the “Pater d’habitude.” The patois may be thus translated:—
“Pater d’habitude,