As the drinkers step out of Burke's pub, one says to another,
"Night. Night. May Allah the Excellent One your soul this
night ever tremendously conserve." The fantastic language of Oxen
of the Sun here seems to be drawing on some nighttime
prayer from the Middle East. There are many such prayers in
Islam, though no precise model has yet been identified.
Thornton writes,
"This appears to be a Moslem prayer, but I have not located this
specific formula in any of the works on Moslem scripture or
prayer which I have seen." Gifford declares more definitively
that it is "A formal Arabic salutation (and prayer) pronounced
at bedtime," but he cites no source. Slote, Mamigonian, and
Turner ignore the sentence completely in their extensive
annotations, as do Jeri Johnson and Declan Kiberd in their more
selective notes, and Harry Blamires, Terence Killeen, and
Patrick Hastings likewise neglect it in their guidebooks. In the
face of so much scholarly silence one might be tempted to
suppose that no allusion is involved.
But Islam does have a strong tradition of bedtime and nighttime
prayers, and their language often comes close to the sentence in
Oxen. In a 5 June 2018 web article on "The Different
Types of Prayer at Night" (www.islam21c.com), Assad Ahmad
details various kinds and quotes the Prophet on their
importance: "Be keen on night prayer as it is the habit of the
righteous, it’s your mean of proximity to your Lord, expiation
of sins and a barrier against sinning." Some Islamic bedtime
prayers entrust the soul to Allah who has created it and who is
all-powerful. One of the examples illustrated here recommends
reciting the words, "O Allah, verily You have created my soul
and You shall take its life, to You belongs its life and death.
If You should keep my soul alive then protect it, and if You
should take its life then forgive it. O Allah, I ask You to
grant me good health." From this to Joyce's sentence, there is
only a slight increase in extravagance.
There is also little conceptual difference from the familiar
Christian prayer prescribed for children: "Now I lay me down
to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep. And if I die before
I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take." But the Islamic
emphasis on the greatness of Allah, which Joyce's hyperbolic
language makes quite resonant ("ever tremendously conserve"),
imparts a much more majestic feeling to the parting salutation
under the stars.
