St Patrick's Breastplate

After Cecil Frances Alexander (1889), with additions from the Old Irish.

The Prayer

Changes from Alexander's Text

The base text is Cecil Frances Alexander's 1889 metrical version, "I bind unto myself today," which is in the public domain. The comparison text is her version as commonly printed, for example on the Association of Catholic Priests website. The same text appears as hymn 370 in the Episcopal Church's Hymnal 1982, where it has been in long-standing congregational use. Every line not listed below is word-for-word Alexander's.

Substantive changes

1. Stanza 4 (creation), line 5. One line replaced.

2. New stanza, inserted between "Against the demon snares of sin…" and Alexander's second "Against" stanza.

3. Alexander's second "Against" stanza, line 1. One line replaced.

4. "Christ be with me" stanza. Four lines added after "Christ in mouth of friend and stranger."

5. Closing. "Amen" moved from the final stanza into a new closing petition.

Reasoning for the Additions

Background

The original prayer is an Old Irish lorica ("breastplate"), a prayer of protection probably composed in the 7th or 8th century and traditionally attributed to St Patrick. It survives in the 11th-century Liber Hymnorum, where it is titled Faeth Fiada, most likely meaning a "spell of concealment." Legend later reinterpreted this as the "Deer's Cry": Patrick and his companions, ambushed on the way to Tara, appeared to their enemies as a deer and fawns.

Alexander did not translate from the Irish. She wrote a metrical paraphrase from Whitley Stokes's prose translation, shaping it for Victorian congregational singing. Her version keeps the prayer's overall structure: the Trinity, Christ's saving acts, the company of heaven, the powers of creation, the attributes of God, the placing of these powers between the one praying and evil, and Christ on every side. Some of the original's distinctive protective content, however, was softened, generalized, or dropped. The revisions restore the most significant of these elements while keeping Alexander's text as the base and matching her meter (mostly eight-syllable lines) and rhyme schemes.

The literal translations consulted for comparison are those of Stokes and Wright (1889), Bernard and Atkinson (1898), and Stokes and Strachan (1903), the last republished by Kuno Meyer.

1. Fire in the creation stanza

The original invokes the powers of creation: heaven, sun, moon, fire, lightning, wind, sea, earth, and rock. Alexander includes all of them except fire. It was restored by adapting a line she already wrote, so the stanza's shape is unchanged. Fire also matters within the prayer itself, since "burning" appears later among the physical dangers. The same created power invoked for protection is one the prayer asks protection from.

2. The new "Against" stanza

In the original, a second list of threats follows the first. It names specific external spiritual dangers: every cruel and merciless power against body and soul, the incantations of false prophets, the "black laws" of paganism, the false laws of heretics, the craft of idolatry, the spells of women, smiths, and druids, and every knowledge that corrupts body and soul.

Alexander compressed this into "Satan's spells and wiles," "the wizard's evil craft," and "the heart's idolatry." In doing so, she shifted the emphasis in two ways:

• From external to internal. The original's "craft of idolatry" refers to pagan worship and ritual around the person praying. Alexander's "heart's idolatry" makes it a sin within. Both are worthy concerns, but the original is praying against hostile spiritual power aimed at a person, not only against personal temptation.
• Body and soul. The original repeatedly asks protection for body and soul. Early Irish loricas were concerned with physical safety as much as spiritual. Alexander drops the phrase.

The new stanza restores the external threats and the body-and-soul emphasis. Alexander's own stanza follows it, with one line changed (see below). Some overlap results, but repetition is characteristic of the lorica form and works as reinforcement.

On "women" and "pagan." The Old Irish names the "spells of women and smiths and druids." In early medieval Ireland these were the recognized practitioners of charms, curses, and ritual knowledge outside the Church. They are named because they were the people known to wield such power in that society, not because women or smiths were suspect in themselves. Likewise, the "black laws of paganism" (Old Irish gentlecht, from Latin gentilis) refers to the pre-Christian religious and legal order and its binding obligations, not to pagan people.

The prayer's real concern is the practice and its power: sorcery, curses, and spiritual systems that hold a person. The revision names that directly. "All laws of darkness and their hold" keeps the idea of a binding spiritual system. "The spells that malice weaves" identifies what makes a spell dangerous, which is ill will aimed at a person. "All sorcery and secret art" covers women, smiths, and druids together, since they practiced the same kind of power. Generalizing the categories keeps the prayer's intent while removing identifications that no longer carry that meaning. This also fits the prayer's own logic, which elsewhere asks for Christ in the heart of everyone.

The final line, "that binds the mind and blinds the heart," echoes a point where the translators differ: the knowledge that "binds" or "blinds" the soul.

3. "The Adversary" for "Satan"

The Old Irish never names Satan. Its first "Against" list opens with the "snares of demons," and the second names false prophets, heretics, idolatry, and sorcerers: people, practices, and systems. "Satan's spells and wiles" is Alexander's own addition.

The name itself is also a narrowing. Hebrew ha-satan is a title, not a personal name. It carries the definite article, "the adversary" or "the accuser," and that is how it appears in Job 1–2 and Zechariah 3. The New Testament keeps the sense: "your adversary the devil" (1 Peter 5:8), the "wiles of the devil" (Ephesians 6:11), the enemy who sows weeds among the wheat while everyone sleeps (Matthew 13:25). In popular use "Satan" has become a single, nameable villain, which makes it easy to locate evil somewhere else. The prayer's own list points the other way. Its adversary works through false teaching, corrupting knowledge, and the heart's own idolatry.

"The Adversary" restores the title and keeps the line's rhyme and meter. "Spells" is dropped, but the new stanza before it already prays against "the spells that malice weaves."

4. Christ in all who perceive me

This is the most important restoration. The original asks for:

• Christ in the heart of every one who thinks of me
• Christ in the mouth of every one who speaks of me
• Christ in every eye that sees me
• Christ in every ear that hears me

The scope is universal. It includes strangers and enemies, anyone who might intend harm. That makes it a protective petition in its own right: Christ present in the hostile person disarms hostility at its source. It is also the heart of the Faeth Fiada tradition, in which protection works through how others perceive the one praying.

Alexander narrowed the first line to "hearts of all that love me" and dropped the eye and ear lines. "Mouth of friend and stranger" preserves some of the breadth. The four added lines restore the full sequence in her trochaic meter. Her lines were kept rather than replaced, so the stanza now asks for Christ both in those who love the one praying and in all who perceive them.

5. The closing petition

The Old Irish prayer ends with a Latin coda: Domini est salus, Domini est salus, Christi est salus; salus tua, Domine, sit semper nobiscum ("Salvation is of the Lord, salvation is of the Lord, salvation is of Christ; may your salvation, O Lord, be ever with us"). Alexander's final line, "salvation is of Christ the Lord," renders the first part. The petition itself was lost. It is restored as a spoken closing line, ending the prayer as the original does: a statement of faith followed by a request.

Left unchanged

• "God's way to lie before me." This line from the original was not restored. Alexander's "the power of God to hold and lead" arguably covers it, and fitting it in would mean rewriting a stanza that already works well.
• Singability. With four added lines, the "Christ be with me" stanza has twelve lines instead of eight, and the new "Against" stanza adds length. The revised text is intended for prayer, and it no longer fits the traditional ST. PATRICK and DEIRDRE tunes as written.

Sources

The original Old Irish text

• The Irish Liber Hymnorum, ed. J. H. Bernard and R. Atkinson (Henry Bradshaw Society, 1898). Edited from the two 11th-century manuscripts that preserve the prayer.
  • Vol. 1, Text and Introduction (Old Irish text): https://archive.org/details/irishliberhymnor01bern
  • Vol. 2, Translations and Notes (English translation): https://archive.org/details/irishliberhymnor02bern
• Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus, Vol. 2, ed. Whitley Stokes and John Strachan (Cambridge, 1903). Old Irish text with facing English translation; the source of the "spells of women and smiths and wizards" rendering. https://archive.org/details/thesauruspalaeoh02stokuoft
• Wikipedia, "Saint Patrick's Breastplate." A convenient side-by-side presentation of the Old Irish and a literal English translation, with background on the Faeth Fiada title. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick's_Breastplate

Literal and prose translations

• Whitley Stokes, revised by Charles Wright (1889), in The Writings of St. Patrick. The prose translation Alexander worked from. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Writings_of_Saint_Patrick,_the_Apostle_of_Ireland/The_Hymn,_or_'Breastplate'
• Stokes and Wright alongside Alexander and the Old Irish, in a single parallel-text PDF. https://adam-mccune.com/classic-hymns/pdf/IBindUntoMyselfTodayWithIrish.pdf
• Kuno Meyer, "The Deer's Cry" (Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry, 1911), republishing the Stokes and Strachan translation. Opens "I arise today." https://livingbulwark.net/deers-cry-or-st-patricks-breastplate/
• John Carey, in King of Mysteries: Early Irish Religious Writings (Four Courts Press). A well-regarded modern scholarly translation. In print; not freely available online.

Alexander's hymn

• Text as used for this revision (Association of Catholic Priests). https://associationofcatholicpriests.ie/beannachtai-na-feile-padraig-dhaoibh/
• The Hymnal 1982, hymn 370, "I bind unto myself today," set to ST. PATRICK'S BREASTPLATE and DEIRDRE (arr. C. V. Stanford). https://www.commonprayeronline.org/en/hymn/H82/370/text
• Hymnology Archive, "St. Patrick's Hymn." History of the text, Alexander's 1889 versification, and comparison with Meyer's translation. https://www.hymnologyarchive.com/patricks-hymn