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The Spellbook · Protection

The Spellbook · Christianity

Four Angels Round My Head: The Old English Bedtime Prayer

The English bedtime prayer 'Matthew, Mark, Luke and John… four angels round my head': how it is said, its record in 1656 and its European kin.

  • TraditionEnglish popular devotion, recorded by Thomas Ady in 1656 and probably medieval in origin; related 'evening blessings' in German and other European languages
  • ForProtection, Peace, Blessings
  • DifficultySimple
  • Time5 minutes at bedtime
  • WhenEvery night, on lying down to sleep

"Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on" is one of the oldest bedtime prayers in English, said by generations of children and adults as they lay down to sleep. It asks the four evangelists to bless the bed and places four angels around the sleeper, one at each corner. First written down in the seventeenth century by a Protestant writer who disapproved of it, it is a precious survival of medieval popular devotion, and it has close relatives across Europe.

How to do it§

  1. Prepare the bed. Before getting in, straighten the bed and, if you wish, sprinkle a few drops of holy water, or plain water you have blessed with a prayer, on the four corners, as some families did.
  2. Make the sign of the cross. Sit on the bed or kneel beside it and cross yourself.
  3. Name the four corners. Touching or looking towards each corner in turn, say the first lines, naming an evangelist for each: "Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on."
  4. Place the angels. Continue with the traditional lines, in the form recorded in nursery collections: "Four corners to my bed, four angels round my head; one to watch and one to pray, and two to bear my soul away." Picture the angels standing at the head and foot.
  5. Add your own prayer. Pray for those you love by name, for the sick and the anxious, and give thanks for the day. Many add the Lord's Prayer or the guardian angel prayer.
  6. Lie down in peace. Some close with the words of Psalm 4:8, "I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, Lord, only makest me dwell in safety" (King James Version). Put out any candle before sleeping.

Origins and history§

The earliest clear record comes from Thomas Ady's A Candle in the Dark (1656), a sceptical book against witch trials. Ady, a Protestant physician, gave the prayer as an example of the "popish" charms still used by ordinary people, quoting an old woman in Essex who said it at bedtime and who had learned it, he implies, from pre-Reformation tradition. He called such prayers "charms" rather than true prayer, because they relied on set words and saints' names. His version already includes the evangelists blessing the bed.

Prayers of this type were known in the Middle Ages as "paternosters": the "White Paternoster" was a name used in medieval and early modern England for a popular rhyming night prayer, and Chaucer's Miller's Tale (c. 1390) has the carpenter John recite a "night-spell" invoking Jesus and St Benedict against elves and wicked creatures. The idea of angels guarding the sleeper is far older and has biblical roots: Psalm 91 promises that God will give his angels charge over the faithful, and early Christian writers taught that every believer has a guardian angel. The four corners of the bed matched the four evangelists, already linked in Christian art to the four living creatures of Ezekiel and Revelation.

From the eighteenth century onward the rhyme appeared in collections of nursery rhymes and children's prayers, in many variant forms, and it was carried across the English-speaking world. In Germany a parallel evening blessing, "Abends, wenn ich schlafen geh, vierzehn Engel um mich stehn" ("At evening when I go to sleep, fourteen angels stand around me"), appears in the folk-song collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (1806–08) and became famous through the "Evening Prayer" in Engelbert Humperdinck's opera Hänsel und Gretel (1893).

Variations§

Some versions name the angels at the four corners rather than the evangelists, bringing the prayer close to the Jewish bedtime formula of Michael, Gabriel, Uriel and Raphael. Irish and Scottish Gaelic night blessings, such as those collected in the Carmina Gadelica (1900), ask Mary, Brigid and Michael to encircle the sleeper. Parents often say the rhyme with young children as part of a goodnight routine.

Safety and good sense§

If you light a candle or night light, use a stable holder away from bedding and curtains and put it out before sleeping; an electric night light is safer. Prayer can bring comfort at night, but persistent fear, nightmares or insomnia deserve the help of a doctor or counsellor.

Sources and further reading§