The (Unfortunate) Power of Prayer?

[vakkotaur]

A common complaint of grammarians is that people use the word "lay" when they ought to use the word "lie." People will say something like "I need to go lay down." but that is incorrect. It should be, "I need to go lie down." You don't lay down, you lay things down. "I spent the day laying down the carpet."

Where did this confusion come from? I suspect a common childhood prayer contributes to the problem. This one:

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

It reinforces, nightly, that when one rests, one lays down rather than lies down. Yet the first line is correct, if worded strangely. Something is being laid down, the 'me' of the line. "Now I lay me down to sleep." Without the 'me' it would rightly be "Now I lie down to sleep."

Why isn't the shorter, less apt to cause later confusion, version of the first line used? I can think of a couple reasons. Who would wants a prayer, of all things, where it is said, "I lie" somewhere in it? Especially as it is taught to children who will almost certainly point out that they aren't lying and lying is a sin, isn't it? Also, 'lay' in the first line rhymes with 'pray' in the second and fourth lines and that can make the prayer a bit easier to remember. As this is taught to children, ease of learning is advantageous.

Comments

[nefaria.livejournal.com]

I think "lay me down" is a special grammar construct all its own. It's used in "A Bridge over Troubled Waters", and I think I remember reading it in the Bible too. It has a subtly different meaning from "lie down", there's a bit of offering and self-sacrifice in this connotation, it's more like "I place myself in your care" than "I'm going to bed now".

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

If so, I do not ever recall having had that explained to me. Even if it was, it was then forgotten with only the confusion of lay and lie remaining.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't think there's any fine point of meaning. It's merely a reflexive construct, typical of French but uncommon in English. That little rhyming prayer is probably so old that it comes from a time when French was still having a more direct influence on English speech and grammar, because the upper classes and royalty (Normans) all still spoke French.

Just as in French you say "I call myself George" rather than "My name is George" or "I am called George," so you say "I lay myself down" rather than "I lie down."

[hakeber.livejournal.com]

It's a count and meter thing. The first line and the third line have the exact same count. The second and fourth also have the same count. Changing the first line would throw off the meter.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

That does make sense, as it is a poem rather than simple prose. That makes for another reason the prayer is in the problematic form it is.

[foolscap001.livejournal.com]

It's also a question of scansion:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep..

[altivo.livejournal.com]

This was explained to me long, long ago in very simple terms.

"You don't lay down. You lay eggs. Or at least, you would lay eggs if you could but you can't; and if you laid down, it would tickle so you don't."

Then of course there's the other transitive meaning of "lay" that isn't normally explained to children, as in "The rooster gets to lay the hen so when she lays eggs they will actually hatch."

And an even rarer transitive meaning, one that really confused me the first time I encountered it, which very specifically refers to setting a ghost that causes disturbances to rest so that it won't bother people any more. "The priest laid that ghost." I knew only the first and second meanings at the time when I first encountered this as a teen, and thought it meant that priests were extremely peculiar fellows, even moreso than commonly believed.