Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep – circa 1895
A few weeks ago, I posted a child’s bedtime prayer in the German language.
This familiar prayer, in English, was on the reverse of that image.
Published as an advertisement for Star Soap, the flimsy sheet of very thin paper was printed in the 1890’s.
Like most Protestant boomer babies, I knew this prayer as a child.
The prayer does not have any great emotional or nostalgic tug on me; even as a youngster, the prayer seemed to me to belong to a time when the shadow of mortality (especially, sudden death) loomed larger in our consciousness.
Given that our experience of the pandemic is likely to endure for some time, I may add this prayer to my bedtime rituals.
