Topic: Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

[Mooning Freddy]

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep;
And if I die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

I heard that quote for the first time in the Metallica song "Enter Sandman". I thought there was nothing special about it that time. Then I recently heard it in the Silent Hill movie, there's a scene in the orphanage where the children are saying this quote before going to sleep.

So I got interested and looked it up on Wikipedia. It only says that it is a classic children's (Christian) prayer from the 18th century.
Turns out it's a rather famous prayer. It was quoted in many songs, in the soundtrack of Silent Hill 2, and even in the first Nightmare on Elm street movie.

I don't know what, but something about that prayer sounds wrong to me. It freaks me out. For a children's prayer, it's not normal. Its sounds dark. Even evil. Especially the part of "if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take". Sounds very wrong, IMO. What do you think?

[Slayer]

They tought me this when I was in CCD, and it creeped the hell out of me even then.  I was afraid to recite the thing just because of the way it sounded...I was like 8 at the time, though...11 years ago...

[Cypress]

In Reply To #1

I've been saying that prayer every night before I go to bed for as long as I can remember.

[Mooning Freddy]

In Reply To #2

I doubt it that as a child, if I'm about to die in my sleep, I would give my soul to take to anyone. Even not the Lord.

[ringo]

In Reply To #1
Personally, I like Tupac's version better:

    Now I lay me down to sleep
    I pray the Lord my guns to keep
    If I die before I wake
    I pray the Lord my soul to take

[Slayer]

In Reply To #4

Yeah, that's pretty much what scared the hell out of me...
...I'm not very religious these days, though.

[Aridale]

Ive heard this as long as I can remember too. Its always been known as a kids prayer around here too.

[Blue Cheese]

 Yeah it is pretty creepy. If you look at a lot of old fairy tales and traditional childrens songs, there seems to be this underlying sinister tone to them.
"Ring Around the Rosey" being about the Bubonic plague, The nursery rhyme "Six a Song of Sixpence" was a coded message used by Blackbeard to recruit new crew members, and so on so forth.
 dig this site http://www.rhymes.org.uk

[PFG9000]

I've never found it creepy.

[Gunlord]

In Reply To #1

Grim as it sounds, though, it actually made a lot of sense given the time. Remember, even in the eighteenth century, diseases and other maladies  were quite common in Europe, and many, many kids never lived past ten. The prayer was just a blunt, realistic acknowledgement of that fact--for many children, dying in sleep for whatever reason, from disease or whatever, was a legitimate concern.

[Mooning Freddy]

In Reply To #10

Yes, that is obvious that was legitimate for the time. 
Still, something about that particular prayer sounds culty. "I pray the lord my soul to take"- like self sacrifice.

To tell the truth, I have been in quite a few places holy to several religions, and out of the religions I am familiar with, Christianity (Catholic and Orthodox) scares me the most.
From a modern point of view, when you go inside the huge Cathedrals and Churches that are many in Europe, it makes your blood freeze. The architecture in the more impressive of the European Cathedrals makes the small person shiver uncomfortably when facing the gigantic volume and structure of the buildings. It is only logical, since the Church during the middle-ages was maintaining control over Europe's population trough fear of the life beyond and insecurity about one's future.
Everything about the church awakened a person's fantasy, I must say, not all a non-mythological kind. Even Christianity's symbol- the holy cross, if you think about it, draws people's fear. The figure of Christ, dying in the most terrible form of execution the Romans could come up with, represents according to Christianity salvation, sacrifice and resurrection, but it also represents terrible suffering and death: what no person in his mind would be willing to go through.

[Blue Cheese]

In Reply To #11
You are surrounded by radical Islamists and Christianity scares you the most?

anyway...

Yeah, the size of the churches was meant to show that the man, no matter how powerful, still is tiny before God.  That's not exactly what a church is supposed to do but at least the art is nice.

It sucks that Catholicism is synonymous with Christianity to so many because it is among the most twisted and misguided denominations. Their Mary obsession, their reliance on ceremony and non-biblical traditions...is superfluous.
And the image of the cross is one thing. Yes, it symbolizes His torment and death on our behalf, but Catholics LOVE to actually have little bleeding and dead Jesuses on everything. THAT

[Mooning Freddy]

In Reply To #12

Islam scares me in a whole different way. Ever heard a Muslim prayer? I can hear the mullah (preacher) from the mosque a mile from my house calling the people to the morning/afternoon/evening prayer every day. If you are not familiar with that, I'll tell you that it sounds similar to a wolf with a sour throat howling... After someone stepped on his nuts.

Well, actually, Catholicism is Christianity. At least historically. For most of time, it was only the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox church, that for some one with little knowledge of the matter like me, are not all that different.
Even though as I remember, they used to be rivals through the ages, where the Catholic church was accepted in Italy, Northern and Western Europe, while the Orthodox church was spread in Greece and Eastern Europe (including Russia).
The only significant difference I've noticed is that Orthodox Christians are over-obsessed with icons (holy pictures of saints, every house had loads of them).
It was later that the Protestant movement was forged in Germany by Martin Luther, and was spread across Europe. Not without wars, of course. Took some serious beatings from the Catholics before they could forge an independent church.

[Blue Cheese]

In Reply To #13

Catholicism came WAY after actual Christianity. Constantine just advocated it, and used as a weapon. He declared that everyone in Rome would be Christian or else. Catholic literally means "universal". It was THE religion to follow under pain of death.
Later Emperors and Popes added more and more to the scriptures (something expectedly commanded against IN the scriptures) and altered the meaning
s.
That's part of the reason the church didn't go out of it's way to teach the commoners how to read in the Middle Ages.  They new that if they could read they would notice that all the crap they been told was B.S. 

[SymboliC]

If I die before I wake
I pray the lord won't take my "Vania away