Saint Patrick's Prayer ( eng. Saint Patrick's Breastplate ) is a hymn appeal, the original of which is written in Old Irish , authorship is usually attributed to Saint Patrick , but there are expert opinions that this text was created later, in the 8th century [1] . The text is written in the style of a druid spell asking for protection during the journey. The text is included in the Liber Hymnorum , a collection of ancient hymns, found in two manuscripts in Dublin [2] .
The text of the Prayer was translated into English by the Irish poetess Cecile Alexander in 1889 and put on two traditional Irish melodies: St. Patrick and Deirdre. [3] The text “Prayers” (often referred to as “I bind unto myself today”) is now included in the collection for Lutheran Services Book, collections of church hymns of the English Hymnal Church and the Irish Church Hymnal and the 1982 hymn book The Hymnal 1982 of the American Episcopal Church . "Prayer" is often performed during the celebration of St. Patrick's Day on March 17, as well as on Trinity Day . The performance of “Prayer” is different in sound from most church hymns, due to deviations in length and verse size, which requires the use of at least three different melodies.
The prayer, known as “Faeth Fiada” [4] , or “Loric St. Patrick” was first published by Irish painter and historian George Petrie in the book "History of Tara" [5] .
Notes
- ↑ Greene, David. A Golden Treasury of Irish Poetry, AD 600–1200. - London: Macmillan. Reprinted 1990, Dingle: Brandon, 1967. - ISBN 0-86322-113-0 .
- ↑ Stokes, Whitley. Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus: A Collection of Old-Irish Glosses, Scholia, Prose and Verse. - Volume II. - Cambridge University Press. Reprinted 1975, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1904. - ISBN 1-85500-087-3 .
- ↑ Joint Commission on the Revision of the Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America. The Hymnal 1940 Companion. - 2nd edition. - New York: Church Pension Fund, 1951.
- ↑ Faeth Fiada (inaccessible link)
- Rie Petrie, George (1837), Tara Hill , First Prize of the Laws of Petroleum, as noted when Petrieu received the Gold Medal of the Royal Irish Academy, 7 , Part 1, R. Graisberry (publisher / printer), Dublin, 1837, pp. 349 (bottom) -354. For his paper see Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy (Antiquities) , Vol. 18, part 2, pp. 25-232, 1839.