St. Ita

St. Ita is the early Irish saint to whom tradition attributes a lullaby to the infant Jesus, which she is said to have sung while nursing him in her cell. George Sigerson, in Bards of the Gael and Gall (1907), dates her 480–570 and prints the poem under the title “Jesukin”.

The Irish original is preserved in the commentary to the Martyrology of Oengus, which Sigerson cites through Whitley Stokes. Only Sigerson’s version, made after the metre of the original, is given here.