The month of May in Catholic tradition is dedicated to Our Lady and over past weeks I have been praying what the old prayer book, At Our Lady’s Altar, describes as an ‘Ancient Irish Prayer to Our Lady’. But I found myself wondering just how ‘ancient’ this prayer actually was since to me it felt more representative of later medieval or early modern praises of the Blessed Virgin. As you will see from the scans from the prayer book, we are told that it is in use among the Irish-speaking communities of Connacht. I wondered, therefore, if it might have been one of those gathered by Ireland’s first President, Douglas Hyde (1860-1949), in his 1906 collection The Religious Songs of Connacht, and so it proved to be. Dr Hyde recorded that he got this prayer from two separate sources, first from a friend of his who took it down from an old man called Hegarty from Claremorris but he goes on to say:

I got it a great deal better in a beautiful manuscript book that Seóirse Giolla an-Chloig, or Bell, had in Claremorris, and which Dr. Maguire has since very kindly given to me. This book was written by one Edmond O’ Conor in the year 1740. I put down hero the prayer exactly as he wrote it, and since I am changing nothing in the orthography, not even a dot, the reader will see how excellent and exact the book is.

A PRAYER TO THE VIRGIN MARY.

O glorious Virgin, Mother of God, Woman above all rank, praiseworthy in all praising no matter how great, make intercession on my behalf to thine own beloved Only-Son. O honourable Woman, thou art the mother of the King of the Angels and of the Archangels relieve me and save me from every hardship and evil.

O blossom of the patriarchs, of the Virgins and of the angels; O Hope of Glory, O Beauty of the Virgins, O Higher Thought of the angels and of the archangels, remember me, and I pray thee not to forsake me in the fearsome time of my death. O star of the sea, O door of Paradise, O temple of God, O Palace of Jesus Christ, O Harbour of health, O blossom of all nations, O pearl of all sweetness. O Queen sheltering the guilty, O Hope of the Faithful, O upper Brightness of the Virgins and of the Angels; verily it is thy conversation with the angels and with the archangels that is for them a delight.

Therefore, O Mother of Mercy, I place in the protection of thy own blessed hands my going out and my coming in, my lying-down and my rising-up, the sight of my eyes, the touch of my hands, the speech of my mouth, the hearing of my ears, so that they may be pleasing to thine own beloved Son. Amen.

Douglas Hyde , Abhrain diadha chúige Connacht -The Religious Songs of Connacht, a collection of poems, stories, prayers, satires, ranns, charms, etc., Volume II (London, 1906), 291-295.

So it seems that this prayer was known from at least the middle of the eighteenth century. I would suspect there is an even older Latin original behind it. This type of litany-style prayer seems to have translated very readily into Gaelic tradition, there is another at the blog here which was similarly labelled ‘ancient’, but which is later medieval. One which may fairly be described as ‘ancient’, the Hymn of the eighth-century monk Cú Chuimne of Iona, is also available at the blog here.