A Poem of God’s Love

This air comes from *Dánta Dé* — "song-poems of God" — a hymnal first published in 1928 for the church of the newly independent Irish state, and revived on a 1996 Notre Dame recording of the same name, where its Irish title is given as "Go Rab Tú Mo Bhoile," "May You Be My Stronghold." That title is a form of the old lorica "Rop tú mo baile," a tenth- or eleventh-century prayer for protection — the same prayer Mary Byrne and Eleanor Hull rendered, in 1905 and 1912, as the English hymn "Be Thou My Vision." The Irish word *baile* holds both meanings at once: a stronghold and a vision.