Saint Patrick's Breastplate

Attributed to Saint Patrick, in 433

The first time I ever heard or sung today’s Hymn of the Week, almost thirty years ago, it was during the ordination Mass of a good friend, who knew what great church music was all about, while so much of it was still new to me. The closing hymn was one we’ve featured here, He Who Would Valiant Be, and I may say that if a priest lacks valor, he’d better go into another line of work. That hymn fits well with today’s. You may know it by its first line, “I Bind unto Myself Today,” though the Irish will call it “Saint Patrick’s Breastplate,” and for good reason.

The story is that on that day I spoke of yesterday, when Saint Patrick dared to come before King Leoghaire and his troops and all the druids who sought the saint’s life — that Easter day in 433, Patrick uttered a prayer of protection, a breastplate prayer, such as was customary among the druids themselves when they invoked their pagan gods. If you are going out to fight, you had better wear a breastplate, and what Patrick bound to himself body and soul was “the strong name of the Trinity”: his faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Creator, Redeemer, Strengthener, light in darkness, hand to guide, power to sustain. The verses almost all begin with that invocation, which is also a vow: “I bind unto myself today,” which in the Old Irish, and completing the sentence, is Atomriug indiu niurt tren, togairme Trinoite. May I help with the words here? The atom is a preposition followed by the first person singular ending, because prepositions in the Celtic languages do that: it means to myself. The riug is the verb, “I bind.” Indiu means today — like Latin hodie; neither one of them is related to English day. The niurt means power: it is cousin to Welsh nerth, which means the same, and with the Latin name Nero, from a root for manly. That word’s similarity to Italian nero, black, is completely coincidental; they too are not related. Well, I’ll wrap up the sentence here: I bind unto myself today the strong power, the invocation of the Trinity.

It’s actually quite a long prayer, a couple of pages of Old Irish, and I’ve seen an edition that argues that we really ought to understand it as such: “I bind myself to the strong power, the invocation of the Trinity.” I’m not proficient in Old Irish, so I can’t decide the matter. But good Lord, what power! Well then, you might suppose that some Irish soldier and scholar translated it into English for our hymnals, but it isn’t so. It was our beloved Mrs. Alexander, Cecil Frances Alexander, the author of hundreds of hymns especially for children, such as Once in Royal David’s City. It’s part translation, part paraphrase, and much of the original is left out, as was fitting, but she’s well captured the confidence, the daring, the stalwart and straightforward declaration of truth, that shines like burnished bronze. As it should well do. We hear from an Old Irish song sung by Fiacc, one of the druids whom Patrick converted to the faith, that the saint when he came to Ireland, “In Slane, in the territory of Benn-Boirche, he had not thirst nor hunger; he sang a hundred psalms every night; he served the angels’ King. He slept on a bare stone then, and wet reeds around him; a pillar-stone was his pillow; he left not his body in warmth. He preached the Gospel to everyone, he wrought great marvels widely; he healed the halt with the lepers, dead he raised them to life.”

There’s another feature of this hymn that makes it most unusual. After saying, again and again, “I bind unto myself,” Patrick shifts the focus to Christ: Christ becomes the subject of the sentences. And most aren’t sentences in the English sense. They are the name of Christ, followed by one of those personal prepositions, all ending in -m, meaning me: so then, Crist lim, Crist remam: Christ with me, Christ before me, and so on, above, below, at my right, at my left — everywhere, and even in the heart of every man who thinks of me. For this part of the hymn, since the lines are so different, you need a different melody, and sure enough, that is how it is sung, before we return in the final stanza to the original melody, and the return is all the more powerful for the suspense in which we’ve been holding it. Both melodies are traditional Irish airs, arranged by the British composer Charles Villiers Stanford. It surely is one of the mightiest hymns of all time.

I bind unto myself today
The strong name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One, and One in Three.

I bind this day to me forever,
By power of faith, Christ's incarnation,
His baptism in the Jordan river,
His death on cross for my salvation;
His bursting from the spiced tomb,
His rising up the heavenly way,
His coming at the day of doom,
I bind unto myself today.

I bind unto myself the power
Of the great love of cherubim,
The sweet 'Well done' in judgment hour,
The service of the seraphim;
Confessors' faith, apostles' word,
The patriarchs' prayers, the prophets' scrolls,
All good deeds done unto the Lord,
And purity of virgin souls.

I bind unto myself today
The virtues of the starlit heaven,
The glorious sun's life-giving ray,
The whiteness of the moon at even;
The flashing of the lightning free,
The whirling wind's tempestuous shocks,
The stable earth, the deep salt sea
Around the old eternal rocks.

I bind unto myself today
The power of God to hold and lead,
His eye to watch, his might to stay,
His ear to hearken to my need;
The wisdom of my God to teach,
His hand to guide, his shield to ward,
The word of God to give me speech,
His heavenly host to be my guard.

Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One, and One in Three,
Of whom all nature hath creation;
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

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