Translation: “Horis Peractis Undecim”

This Mozarabic hymn is apparently sung on Fridays (on even weeks) in the current form of the Liturgy of the Hours. Awesomely enough, it’s a hymn thanking God for the end of the work week and hoping for an eternal payday!

Thanks to Hymnos Debitos Canamus, for bringing the song to my attention and translating it literally. I wonder what the tune is?

Horis Peractis Undecim
Lyrics: Anon. (Mozarabic Trad.)
Singable translation: Maureen S. O’Brien, 7/11/08

Eleven hours’ duty done,
Day heads t’ward ev’ning at a run.
Let’s pay back some of what God’s due,
With willing minds and music, too.

The day work now is gone and past
For which, Christ, you employed us last.
Your gifts of glory are the same
As promised to those who first came.

You call us in now for the pay
You give us toward that future day.
Aid us in labor, and restore
Us when our work is done once more.

This is a more or less literal singable translation. However, the second verse didn’t work very well in the first way I did it, because it didn’t make you think of the scriptural allusion. So a little less literalism this time.

PS — I know it’s Mozarabic because it’s in Volume 27 of the Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevii. This volume was on “Gothic Hymnody: The Mozarabic Hymns of the Old Spanish Rite”. (I don’t know much German, but I can get that part.) And if you’re wondering why “Gothic”, it’s because the Visigoths ruled Spain and Portugal for a while. (They didn’t go away; they melted into the Celt/Iberian/Everybody in the Roman Empire stew.)