The prayer that we know as On Lofsong of ure Louerde [LUL] survives in a single copy in the thirteenth-century London, British Library MS Cotton Nero A. XIV (ff. 128r–131r). The last in a series of four lyrical interces-sions (one verse and three prose) which follow Nero's copy of Ancrene Wisse, it is one of the so-called Wooing Group texts, a grouping which includes Nero's four intercessions as well as Þe Wohunge of ure Lauerde, extant in the thirteenth-century British Library MS Cotton Titus D.xviii, also following a copy of Ancrene Wisse. All five of these lyrical texts were, of course, edited together by Catherine Innes-Parker in 2015, under the title The Wooing of Our Lord and the Wooing Group Prayers.

LUL is, as Innes-Parker pointed out in her edition, the only one of the Wooing Group prayers which has no manuscript rubric or title; the title by which it is known was provided by Morris and Thompson, two of its early editors. By contrast, Þe Wohunge is named in Titus, and both On God Ureisun of ure Lefdi [UUL] (ff. 120v–123v) and On Wel Swuðe God Ureisun of God Almihti [UGA] (ff. 123v–126v) are identified in Nero. And although Nero does not name Þe Oreisun of Seinte Marie [OSM] (ff. 126v–128r), it is given this title in London, British Library MS Royal 17 A.xxvii, where it also appears. Despite the absence of rubric or title, LUL is, however, a recognizably distinct unit in Nero, beginning with an eleven-line capital ‘I’ in red, and ending with ‘amen’.

In her edition of the Wooing Group prayers, Innes-Parker characterized LUL as ‘a direct address from the soul to Christ’ which ‘opens with a brief history of salvation’ before taking the reader ‘through an examination of her own sin rooted in an agonized meditation on Christ's sufferings in the Passion’. She pointed out that it ‘takes the reader far beyond the simple rehearsal of sin found in OSM’, describing it as ‘steeped with the affective imagery of the Song of Songs, made popular by Bernard of Clairvaux's sermons on the Song of Songs’. The agonized intensity which Innes-Parker located in LUL is indeed striking; of all the Nero prayers, it is the one most preoccupied with the earthly isolation of the speaker and with the cultivation of an intimate relationship with Christ as spouse.