I've thought of the prayer, or at least I think of it as a prayer.  "From ghosties and ghoulies and long leggity beasties and things that go bump in the night, heavenly Father deliver us".  For whatever reason I thought of it as being Scottish.  But, after some useless research, I've pretty much decided that who ever penned this little prayer was a cruising sailor.  You see thoughts of ". ...things going bump in the night" are always on the minds of sailors.  I used to sleep ever so soundly on Chain Reaction, our Sea Sprite 28 back in Rhode Island, until something went bump!  Loud bump, soft bump, almost imperceptible bump, didn't matter.  I'd be out of the berth and up and out on deck like my feet were on fire.  Thinking that it could be the anchor, I'd head instinctively forward to investigate.  And the bumping begins.  Chain Plates that connect the shrouds to the deck lay waiting silently in the dark for the toes of the rushing barefoot investigator who winces with pain at first bump.  Next come those little rain protectors that surround the portholes and are positioned ankle high and stick just out far enough to scrape some skin off the anklebones, for bump number two.  It is pitch dark so you can understand why you just miss reaching for the head stay skinning your knuckles while lower down your foot locates the anchor cleat injuring whatever toes were here to fore uninjured.  Now its time to think that it would have been wise to have switched on the spreader lights before going topsides.  Everything seems all right, in the pitch dark, with the anchor, so you head for the cockpit having forgotten the booby traps that got you on the way out.  I guess we don't have to go over that again.  Then comes the cockpit coaming, which is going to trip you into a three-point cockpit landing always damaging your shins on the locker hasp.  To inspect the leg damage so far you deftly reach below to the breaker panel and switch on the spreader lights.  Now your ego will get probably the worst bump of all.  You are rafted to another boat, which would ordinarily be fine, but you are currently in a position of one "mooning" the moon when the female voice comes from the rafting partner asking "is everything alright".  That would be OK if only you were wearing something more than your "tighty whiteys".  In this position the only thing you can think of is your mother's admonitions regarding "clean underwear".  Right!  Clean underwear on a cruising sailboat?  So you say goodnight and you go back to your bunk and repeat the prayer.

  Land Lubbers laugh at a sailor's walk.  They say he has his "sea legs".  Well you Lubbers, take a closer look at those legs.  See the bruises, scrapes and cuts.  See the accumulated scar tissue.  See the blackened toe nail(s).  That walk is not "sea legs".  It's a victory dance celebrating having survived things "going bump in the night."