Common Ground Song 89 ‘Night has fallen’’
Words / Music: Tom Colvin © Hope Publishing Co.
YouTube recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5qduinik0WM
Featured image: Start of a setting of Nunc Dimittis by C. Hylton Stewart.

Search for ‘Night has fallen’ online and the vast majority of results will refer to a 2025 action movie. This could hardly be any different. It is a call-and-response type chant, obviously intended as part of Night Prayer. Tom Colvin has adapted a Malawian chant, which like much African music is easily picked up by ear, and intended to be sung unaccompanied. The performance linked above includes the cantor teaching the response to the group before starting the call-and-response. The list of calls is not exactly the same as in Common Ground, but never mind. The point is that the cantor expresses brief one-line prayers (such as ‘We are with you, Lord’ or ‘Keep us in your love’) to which the congregation responds with ‘God our maker, guard us sleeping’.

The reference in the response is to a traditional evening prayer, sometimes used as an antiphon to Nunc Dimittis: ‘Save us, O Lord, waking, guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace’. That in itself refers to Christ’s charge to his disciples in Gethsemane to stay awake and pray with him, as discussed in my last Common Ground post on Saturday https://pilgrims.org.uk/wp/2026/09/26/praying-for-our-leaders/

This idea, that while we are awake we should be at least alert to Christ’s presence with us, and praying as we go, while he guards us while we are asleep, is an ancient rhythm of prayer. The ‘Nunc dimittis’ is also traditionally sung as part of Evensong: recognising the presence of Christ, we can ‘depart’ in peace, whether that is leaving the church building, settling down to sleep, or ultimately slipping into death in the faith or resurrection.

The same idea is behind another prayer often used at night: ‘Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit’; again, we trust ourselves to God’s care while we are not conscious, both every night of our life, and at the time of our death. I have only recently resumed saying Night Prayer – not every night, but sometimes, before bed. I have adapted that second prayer to include Linda, though she is no longer with us: ‘Into your hands, O Lord, I commend her spirit’.

Which leads me to a ‘bonus track’: the YouTube clip that cam up immediately after the performance of ‘Night Has fallen’ linked above was, fortuitously, a rendition of Julie Gold’s song ‘Heaven’, which was played as we left the crematorium at Linda’s funeral. Take a listen if you wish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siwYEP_17os