St. Patrick’s Binding Prayer

A Binding Prayer or Breastplate is a poem that invokes God’s pro­tec­tion on a journey (either lit­eral or the metaphor­ical “journey of life”) against all manner of evils, including “the spells of women and smiths and druids.” It was dated as from the 8th cen­tury by modern aca­d­e­mi­cians and is tra­di­tion­ally attrib­uted to St. Patrick. It is com­posed in the same style as pagan pro­tec­tion charms from Ireland, but with clearly Christian con­tent. It was trans­lated into English by Cecil Frances Alexander as the pop­ular Victorian hymn “I bind unto myself to-day.”(Wikisource)

The orig­inal Irish text can be found at St. Patrick’s Breastplate.

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day we’re providing our visitors with a free printable copy of St. Patrick’s Breastplate.

Click on the image below to down­load an 8 ¹⁄₂ x11 pdf.