# Children's prayer / poem  - whodunit?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childrens-prayer-poem-whodunit/326029>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [October 13, 2005, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childrens-prayer-poem-whodunit/326029 "2005-10-13T04:26:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![anamarie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/73ab20/32.png) [@anamarie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anamarie)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2005, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childrens-prayer-poem-whodunit/326029/1 "2005-10-13T04:26:52Z")

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😕 The familiar poem which goes “…If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take”? I know it is a shortened version of the original poem which begins “Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on…”, the author is anonymous / unknown. Where and when did this originate? More intriguingly, is there anything out there that identifies the author by name? If so, who was he - or she? Please answer - my friend insists that anonymous and unknown are two different persons :dubious:

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**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2005, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childrens-prayer-poem-whodunit/326029/2 "2005-10-13T04:38:56Z")

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**Moderator’s Note:** Welcome to the Straight Dope Message Board, **anamarie**. This forum (About This Message Board) is for technical and administrative stuff (announcements, questions about or problems with how the board works, test posts); our forum for questions with factual answers is General Questions, so I’m moving this post there now.

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**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\
**Post date:** [October 13, 2005, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/childrens-prayer-poem-whodunit/326029/3 "2005-10-13T15:02:27Z")

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Lots of sites, [e.g. Bartlett’s](http://www.bartleby.com/100/690.146.html), claim it’s from the 18th century, [however:](http://www.goines.net/Writing/against_the_fall_of_night.html)

> [@](#):
>
> “Now I lay me down to sleep,” is from the New England Primer (T. Fleet, Boston, 1737) though ithe first record of it is found in the Enchiridion Leonis (AD 1160).

Rather than a person’s name, or a description of a large cat which subsists on Mexican food, [Enchiridion Leonis](http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Enchiridion+Leonis%22&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&start=20&sa=N), appears to be the name of a book of prayers, likely published under a pope Leo.