Sir Hilary’s Prayer
Winthrop Mackworth Praed, who seems to have had a special fondness for charades, left nearly forty excellent ones in his published works, the solution of which, in every case but one, is clear and satisfactory. The exception is “Sir Hilary’s Prayer at Agincourt,” as follows:
Sir Hilary charged at Agincourt,
Sooth, ’twas an awful day!
And though in that old age of sport
The rufflers of the camp and court
Had little time to pray,
’Tis said Sir Hilary muttered there
Two syllables by way of prayer.
My first to all the brave and proud
Who see to-morrow’s sun;
My next with her cold and quiet cloud
To those who find their dewy shroud
Before to-day’s be done;
And both together to all blue eyes
That weep when a warrior nobly dies.
When this appeared, several answers followed. That which was usually accepted was Good Night. Not satisfied with this, an English lady wrote to the Princess Mele, Praed’s daughter, at Naples, presuming that she would be able to speak with full knowledge of the subject. In her reply she said,—“As to my dear father’s charade, Sir Hilary, there is not the smallest question that the answer is Good Night—an unsatisfactory answer, as he himself felt, but that that was the word in his mind when he wrote the charade there cannot be the shadow of a doubt.”
Nevertheless, as the Lord Chancellor said, we doubt. A far better solution of the prayer is Aide, Dieu! Help, Lord! Aid is needed for the small band of young men who are to march out to fight at dawn; the dew (Dieu) will fall in a cold and quiet cloud on the bodies of the slain; and Adieu (with which Aide-Dieu will, even when spoken with no inordinate rapidity, be almost identical in sound) is expressive of the sorrowful parting.
A distinguished Boston clergyman, desiring to inform his mother of an interesting domestic event, sent her a postal card containing the following directions:
“From sweet Isaiah’s sacred song, ninth chapter and verse six,
First thirteen words please take, and then the following affix;
From Genesis, the thirty-fifth, verse seventeen, no more,
Then add verse twenty-six of Kings, book second, chapter four;
The last two verses, chapter first, first book of Samuel,
And you will learn, what on that day, your loving son befell.”