"lay me down" in "Bridge Over Troubled Water"
Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2023 12:24 am
If you are familiar with the music scene of the 1970's, you will remember Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water" (1970), in which the next lines are repeated several times.
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
When I first listened to the song on the radio, I was puzzled with the last line "I will lay me down." It seemed to me that this should be rendered as "I will lie down."
Later I learned about "poetic license," by which poets are allowed to depart from conventional grammatical rules in order to produce literary effect. In the instance above, the song needs five syllables in the last line. "I will lie down," which is short of one syllable, will not fit here.
I also learned that the expression "lay me down" appears in the Bible. In Psalms 4:8 in the King James Version, for instance, we find "I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep:" Yet I believe this sounds archaic. The phrasing in the Revised Standard Version is "In peace I will both lie down and sleep;"
I have always wondered how English speakers would react to this lyric. Doesn't the archaism of this expression bother you?
Like a bridge over troubled water
I will lay me down
When I first listened to the song on the radio, I was puzzled with the last line "I will lay me down." It seemed to me that this should be rendered as "I will lie down."
Later I learned about "poetic license," by which poets are allowed to depart from conventional grammatical rules in order to produce literary effect. In the instance above, the song needs five syllables in the last line. "I will lie down," which is short of one syllable, will not fit here.
I also learned that the expression "lay me down" appears in the Bible. In Psalms 4:8 in the King James Version, for instance, we find "I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep:" Yet I believe this sounds archaic. The phrasing in the Revised Standard Version is "In peace I will both lie down and sleep;"
I have always wondered how English speakers would react to this lyric. Doesn't the archaism of this expression bother you?