The Man He Killed
Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin

Should it be “sat us down” or “sat down”.

The careless superfluity quite peeves me!

“Now I lay me down to sleep”  must surely legitimise a plural “sat us down to wet”.

douglang - 22 December 2008 12:23 PM

“Now I lay me down to sleep”  must surely legitimise a plural “sat us down to wet”.

Do you mean ‘lay’ as the present tense of ‘to lay’, or as the past tense of ‘to lie’?  The comparison only works in the latter case.

As the next line is “I pray my Lord my soul to keep”, I would suggest the past tense as being altogether more appropriate.

And if I die before I wake,
I pray my Lord my soul to take.

douglang - 04 February 2009 01:12 PM

As the next line is “I pray my Lord my soul to keep”, I would suggest the past tense as being altogether more appropriate.

And if I die before I wake,
I pray my Lord my soul to take.

Well, personally I would say the present tense, as all the other verbs you quote are in the present.  (Now I lay = now I am laying.)  Otherwise the sequence of tenses would be wrong.

That means we have the verb ‘to lay’, which is transitive.  The reflexive object would normally be myself, but me is used as a poetic alternative.

The situation regarding ‘sat us down’ is somewhat different, as sat is normally intransitive.  Here the poetic device is the addition of a grammatically unnecessary object.

Lie, lay, lain
Lay, laid, laid
Always had trouble with them.  Never could teach them. Never hear them used correctly.

You’re out of step with history on this one, ACB.

According to a discussion thread under the first Google entry after Wilkipedia’s ascription of it to Metallica, you will find:

“Now I lay me down to sleep” is first found in print in Thomas Fleet’s New England Primer, the first edition is from 1737.

As a nursery rhyme, it first appeared in 1840 in London Jingles by J G Rush. It was printed there as:

I lay me down to rest me,
I pray to God to bless me;
If I should sleep and never wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Well, maybe you see it a different way, but ‘lay’ and ‘pray’ in the nursery rhyme both look like the present tense to me!

Now I agree, ACB, I was fixated on whether it should be lie or lay, but the tense is the present.