Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Now I lay me down to sleep is a classic children's prayer from the 18th century.

Listen to this article · (info)

This audio file was created from an article revision dated 2006-05-16, and may not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)

More spoken articles

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.

1 Entertainment references

[edit] Entertainment references

[edit] The Simpsons

In The Simpsons episode "Lisa's First Word," the clown bed that a young Bart is trying to sleep in menacingly cackles, "If you should die before you wake ..." (followed by evil laughter and visions of the bed attempting to eat him), a play on the prayer's line, "If I should die before I wake."

Bart's father, Homer, had built the bed, but due to Homer's inept crafting skills, the bed has a frightening appearance, like that of an evil clown. Bart "hears" the bed utter the line in his nightmare.

[edit] Movies

It appears in the horror film Nightmare on Elm Street, spoken by Heather Langenkamp's character Nancy before sleeping and encountering Freddy Krueger.
It can also be heard in the 1982 film Poltergeist.
It is heard in a scene in the 1987 film The Untouchables, in which Eliot Ness (played by Kevin Costner) sees his daughter saying it before she goes to sleep.
It is also heard in the 1990 movie Hard to Kill where Steven Segal prays with his son shortly before he is attacked and nearly killed.
It appears in the Silent Hill movie, as well as in the Silent Hill 2 survival horror game.

[edit] Music

It is revealed in the Silent Hill 2 Original Soundtracks track "The Reverse Will" when played in reverse.
It is also in the lyrics for the Metallica song Enter Sandman. When Pat Boone covered this song in a jazz style, he used the alternative third and fourth lines

Guard me, angels, through the night

Wake me in the morning light

It is also in the lyrics for the Snoop Doggy Dogg song "Murder Was The Case".
A satire of this prayer is present at the beginning of 2pac's "When Thugs Cry"

When thugs cry..

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

God as my witness, when thugs cry, too much is hard

It is also in the lyrics for the Her Space Holiday song "The Weight of the World".

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

But what about the rest of me?

The Megadeth song Go To Hell features the prayer recited by a group of young girls.

Now I lay me down to sleep

Blah blah blah, my soul to keep

If I should die before I wake

I'll go to hell for heaven's sake.

ABK's song "While you're Sleeping has the quote in his lyrics

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray my dreams don't slowly creep Caught up in a web with no escape Something the mind can't break unless your wide awake.

The Helix song Long Way to Heaven also recites this prayer alternately as:

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the lord my soul to keep

If I die before I wake

Keep me rocking for heaven's sake.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers song Sir Psycho Sexy features an original version of this prayer:

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the funk will make me freak

If I should die before I waked

Allow me Lord to rock out naked.

The Stuck Mojo song The Sky is Falling" recite the prayer alternately as:

Now I lay me down to sleep

I pray the Lord my soul to keep

If the sky should fall before I wake

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

The Steel Attack song Embraced By Fear quotes the last two lines of the prayer:

Yet still you're afraid

Never to wake up again

"If I die before I wake

I pray the lord my soul to take"

The song You may die by Outkast has the lyrics spoken by a woman at the beginning. Yet the language it is spoken in is unsure. Speculations range from Nahuatl and Aztec to Esperanto, which seems to be the right guess.