Adsunt tenebrae primae – Dictionary of Hymnology

"Adsunt tenebrae primae" is an anonymous Latin evening hymn designated as "Ymni de prima vigilia" (Hymn for the First Watch). Its earliest printed liturgical source is the Mozarabic Breviary published at Toledo in 1502 (folio 304).

The five-stanza text in four-line stanzas was published by Hermann Adalbert Daniel in his Thesaurus Hymnologicus (Vol. I, p. 194), citing the earlier compilation by Giuseppe Maria Tommasi (Opera Omnia, Rome, 1747, Vol. II, p. 425) and its inclusion in Jacques-Paul Migne's Patrologia Latina (Vol. 86, columns 928 and 965). In a later volume of the Thesaurus Hymnologicus (Vol. IV, p. 57), Daniel offered a severe criticism of one of the lines as printed in the Mozarabic Breviary, though subsequent hymnologists have noted that the original reading may well be correct despite his objections.

The hymn entered English congregational use through a single notable translation:

"The night is closing o'er us": Translated by William John Blew in five stanzas of four lines. It was initially printed on a fly-leaf for use in his own church before being published in his Church Hymn and Tune Book (1852) under the section Trinity to Advent (No. 41). The translation was later adopted into The People's Hymnal (1867) and subsequently included in The Hymnary (1872, No. 622).