On the one hand, the Cornish Litany seems to speak of a world that is full of horrors, from which we need protection that only a benevolent and powerful God can give us. Ghouls and ghosts give names to certain elementary fears, which are easy to push aside during the day when there is light and company, and much harder to overcome when you’re alone and it’s dark outside. A ghoul is a monster that will eat you up when given half a chance, that will tear you apart, limb by limb, and then devour what remains of you until there is nothing left. Ghouls, in other words, represent death and the subsequent dissolution of the living body that lies ahead of all of us and that some philosophers (quite wrongly, I think) have dubbed the “greatest evil”. Quite the opposite is expressed by the word ‘ghost’. A ghost is what remains of a person when their body has died. It is a once-living and once-human spirit that refuses to leave, to give up its existence on earth. It continues to be around when by rights it ought to be dead and gone for good. Ghouls and ghosts represent the two opposing existential fears: the fear of death, and the fear of eternal life, or more precisely, of not being able to die.

Yet on the other hand the Cornish Litany makes these monsters lurking in the shadows of our lives appear strangely familiar, like old acquaintances, no doubt worrying, a bit frightening perhaps, but also very much a part of our everyday lives which we have almost gotten used to and have learned to live with. Not ghouls and ghosts, big and strong and meaning business, but ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggety beasties, which certainly sound unpleasant, but not seriously dangerous, like spiders with their (far too) many long and fast legs, whose touch we loathe with no good reason but very strongly nonetheless. And the things that go bump in the night, things of which we don’t know what they are, that don’t even have a name or face, that are just a sudden, unexpected sound in the dark – those things capture the essence of fear itself: the fear of the unknown (for which the German word angst may be more appropriate than the English word fear). Yet again, at the same time, a thing that goes bump in the night, for all that it stands for, is only potentially perilous and does not represent a real, concrete danger. The thing that goes bump in the night is never a burglar who will enter the house the very next moment to rob and perhaps hurt you. It remains just that: a noise in the dark. Similarly, the ghoulies and ghosties stay in the wardrobe or under the bed, a permanent threatening presence, but actually quite harmless. The Cornish Litany is a child’s prayer, which makes us look at the world from a child’s perspective, as a place that is home to innumerable dark forces, which, however, fail to materialise and to unleash their power, as long, that is, as you have a good hiding place. A warm bed and a blanket to pull over you will do just fine. In blessed innocence, and quite charmingly, the prayer knows nothing yet of the real horrors of this world, from which no blanket can protect us.