I bind unto myself to-day

For other English-language translations of this work, see St. Patrick's Breastplate.

Versions of
I bind unto myself to-day
attributed to Patrick, adapted by Cecil Frances Alexander

Alexander wrote this hymn based on earlier translations of St. Patrick's Breastplate in 1889, at the request of Dean H. H. Dickinson of the Chapel Royal at Dublin Castle. Dickinson later wrote:

I wrote to her suggesting that she should fill a gap in our Irish Church Hymnal by giving us a metrical version of St. Patrick's "Lorica," and I sent her a carefully collated copy of the best prose translations of it. Within a week she sent me that exquisitely beautiful as well as faithful version which appears in the Appendix to our Church Hymnal, which is now sung in many churches on St. Patrick's Day.

—H. H. Dickinson, Letter dated February 1896, in the Preface to Alexander's Poems (1897).

2434455I bind unto myself to-day

Versions of I bind unto myself to-day include:

"The Hymn: version of Mrs. Alexander" in The Writings of Saint Patrick, the Apostle of Ireland, (ed.) by Charles Henry Hamilton Wright (1874).
"I bind unto myself to-day" (unidentified edition).