SUPPLICATORY CANON TO ST. DAVID OF EVIA (Θεῶ τό δοτήρι τῶν ἀγαθῶν) ... ANONYMOUS

Ode 1. 
Irmos.  After crossing the sea as if it were dry ground and escaping the wickedness of Egypt, the Israelite cried out:  Let us sing to our redeemer and God.

Falling down before God, the giver of blessings, who has manifestly glorified you, divine David, I beg of you to open my lips that I may hymn and celebrate you.

As you were a fragrant meadow of the Lord, bearing fragrant fruits of the divine virtues, O David, drive away the foul stench of my passions.

We praise you in hymns as a solid pillar of asceticism, for you were continuously bound to Christ since childhood.  Therefore, we cry out to you:  Cause us to cleave to the church of Christ.

O Maiden whom all praise, deem him who takes refuge in your divine protection and glorifies your holy image to be worthy to faithfully please our Creator and God.

Ode 3.
Irmos.  O Lord, as you covered the vault of the sky with a roof and built the church, confirm me in your love, O summit of desires, support of the faithful and only merciful one.

Rendered foul and filthy by iniquity and by hateful and disgusting deeds, I have approached you with the prayers of a supplicant, O saint.  I cry to you:  Purify me, David, as you were purified by asceticism, prayer, fasting, toils and afflictions.

I beg you to cleanse me of my filthy sins, elder David, and cure me of the degeneracy of my mind.  Correct me, for you loved Christ the savior with all your heart from childhood, O blessed vessel of grace.

O David, our sympathetic defender, we all know that you are an unbreakable support and imperturbable fortress, and a star among the saints.  With all our hearts we hasten always to your mediation. 

Sanctify all the ranks of the pious who approach your divine monastery faithfully, David, for you are a golden vessel of holiness and a well pouring out the water of healings upon all.

O Mother unwedded and sanctified womb, since you have boldness towards Christ your son, entreat him unceasingly to give grace and mercy to those who hymn you.

Prayers between Odes 3 and 4.
O David, preserve from dangers and adversities your suppliants who honor with all reverence your asceticism and worship your holy head.

Tone 2.  Fervent Intercession.
You were a most inspired blossom of Locrida and the brightest torch of Evia, all-blessed one; wherefore we cry to you, David, chief of the ascetics:  Be our unwavering champion in all the adversities of life.

Ode 4.
Irmos.  I have heard, O Lord, the mystery of your dispensation; I have meditated on your works and glorified your divinity.

You heal our pestilential diseases, most fervent servant of Christ, by your unceasing mediation with our Creator and Lord.

Support the Orthodox youth, holy Father—for they are buffeted by a storm of arrows launched by the devil—and direct them to salvation.

I have wretchedly stained the cloak of my soul with various falls; by your intercessions, David, I ask you to make it clean.

Wondrous protector of the refugee, Mother of the Most High and King of all, I, a miserable sinner, entreat you to repress the impulses of my body.

Ode 5.
Irmos.  Illumine us with your commandments, O Lord, and by your lofty arm grant us your peace, O merciful God.

You were strong, David, and crushed the arrogance of the enemy with divine strength, and now you intercede for us to put Satan the deceiver to shame by your prayer.

You are a flood of wonders and an ocean of miracles, wondrous David, fulfilling every request of those who honor you.

You found the grace to save us from death and from the traps of the fiend, O David; all men praise you, the pride of the Locrians and the Evians.

Take pity on us, supremely praiseworthy Mother of God, for you inconceivably conceived and bore the only all-merciful God.

Ode 6
Irmos.  I will pour out my supplication to the Lord and to him will I declare my afflictions, for my soul has been filled with troubles and my life has approached Hades; so like Jonah I pray:  Raise me up from death, O God.

In my dire straits, I have been paralyzed—alas!—by indifference and the greatest debts, but taking courage from your abundant intercessions, I cry to you, all-blessed David:  Raise me up and quickly grant me the kiss of life.

Blessed are you, all-glorious David, who from childhood followed the footsteps of the Lord and attained to the measureless height of gentleness and innocence; wherefore also you have received abundant grace to heal our diseases.

Grant me a joyful life, lived in perfect peace and love, for you loved from the bottom of your heart the redeemer and the prince of peace and life , O David, and in your life you faithfully did what he desired.

We joyfully run to you, pure Virgin, for you are the fountain of ever-living streams, and we cry out:  Quickly rain down the august streams of eternal life on the thirsting hearts of your servants amid their misfortunes, all-blameless Virgin.

Kontakion.
Your monastery has acquired you as her great helper, a sympathetic defender and most fervent champion, thrice-blessed David, and joyfully cries out:  Chase away the gloom of sins and, as the true servant of Christ, show the road to salvation to those who approach and venerate your holy head.
 
Ode 7.
Irmos.  The youths from Judea, having come to Babylon of old, by their faith in the Trinity trampled down the flame of the furnace, chanting, O God of our fathers, blessed are you.

Having built in Evia your far-famed monastery, David, you brought together a great multitude of monks, and having instructed them with salvific teachings, you departed for Heaven to intercede for us.

As you fended off the attack of mosquitos in Disto by your intercessions, O wonder-working David, quickly chase away every affliction and unclean thought from us by your prayers to Christ.

You endured the false accusation of the faithless enemies of the Spirit, David, in Lebadeia; deliver your suppliants likewise from the same, O saint, so that we may gladly keep the laws of Christ.

O Virgin that virginally bore the law-giver, Christ the Lord:  deem your servants, who always hymn you, worthy to  keep blamelessly the laws of piety and of the Gospel, O pure one.

Ode 8.
Irmos.  The king of Heaven whom the hosts of angels hymn, hymn and exalt him above all forever.

All-blessed David, as you were mighty in deeds and shone in words, give me the power to oppose all the might of the evil one.

You were, O David, the model of blameless conduct and a servant of the divine mysteries; wherefore we hymn you and ask for your intercessions.

Look from the heights of Heaven, wise David, and dry up the outbursts of my passions by your supplications to the king and redeemer of the world.

Having received the power, as his all-immaculate mother, to render merciful the Creator, entreat him fervently on our behalf, O Virgin.

Ode 9.
Irmos.  O Mother of God, we who have been saved through you fittingly confess you, and with the incorporeal choirs magnify you, O pure Virgin.

Inspired David, watch over your august monastery, protect it and guard it with the choirs of the monks who glorify you.

Deem me worthy to attain to heavenly joy, divine David, for I celebrate you in song as our guide to the virtues and the author of miracles.

Deem us worthy to honor you in melodious hymns and to venerate the your reliquary, for we bless you unceasingly, holy David.

O Mother, as you bore the deliverer of men, the Savior and life-giver and the Lord of all, deliver me from the madness of Belial.
 

 
ENDNOTES FOR THE CIRCUMSPECT
Preliminary.  
St. David of Evia came to my attention as St. Jacob of Tsalikis’ go-to for getting miracles done.  See the late Professor Stylianos Papadopoulos's book, The Garden of the Holy Spirit:  Saint Iakovos of Evia (1920-1991), tr. Dr. Dimitri Kagaris, Anthony Hatzidakis, Fr. Emmanuel Hatzidakis (Orthodox Witness, 2019; reprint, 2022).  “Evia” is the Anglophone Greek transliteration of Euboea.  Please visit the Venerable David of Evia Resource Page of John Sanidopoulos for some background on this saint.  

My source for this text is long since lost, but an identical copy seems to be found here.  None of the several versions online report the name of the hymnographer.  I thank Zoilus for proofing the Greek and I thank Aeteia, my lawfully-wedded, for proofing the English.  Any errors surviving their ministrations are purely my own.

Ode I. 

“That I may hymn and celebrate you.”  This canon features a number of “synonymous parallelisms” reminiscent of the Psalms.  Some might argue that this is a tame example of synonymia.  According to Peacham, we use synonymia “when by a variation and change of words that be of like signification, we iterat [sic] one thing diverse times.” Peacham adds “this figure delighteth much both for the plenty of wordes and habite, whether it be in affection of praise or dispraise.”  A full-blown example of synonymia is found in Don Quixote, when the heroic hidalgo tells the merchants that la importancia está en que sin verla lo habeis de creer, confesar, afirmar, jurar y defender.  Since the terminology of rhetoric is after all these centuries not yet settled, I will not quite arbitrarily reserve synonymia for long, rambling lists of synonyms.  For example, when in Ode III the hymnographer says that St. David was “purified by asceticism, prayer, fasting, toils and afflictions,” he seems to be indulging in synonymia.  The fact that our hymnographers were generally steeped in the Psalms seems to justify our description of well-behaved couplets like “hymn and celebrate” as synonymous parallelism.  

“Whom all praise” (πανύμνιατος).  I guess that πανύμνιατος is πανύμνητος with a parasitic iota and an eta shortened to alpha to compensate.  Notice that πανύμνιατος bears the acute accent on the fourth syllable from the end, whereas Greek confines accents to the last three syllables.  According to Mackridge, iota is pronounced as [j] in modern Greek when a voiced consonant precedes iota and a vowel follows it.  For example, παιδιά (/peðja/).  We may therefore suppose that our adjective is proparoxytone and therefore legal.  This seems to underscore the importance of modern Greek to our pseudo-Koine texts.
Lampe reports that this latter word means “worthy of all praise” or “praised by all.”  Both expressions are clunky.  “Worthy of all praise” is wordy mouthful, of which “worthy” is an interpolation.  “Praised by all” is, to begin with, a cretic, so it has to be handled carefully to not disrupt the flow of the line.  Furthermore, it is blighted with the ill-favor of a calque.   “Whom all praise” is a convenient anapest which preserves the idea.   

Ode III.

"Asceticism, prayer, fasting, toils and afflictions" seems to be another example of synonymia.  One could argue that prayer, fasting etc. are all kinds of asceticism; prayer and fasting both kinds of toil; fasting, a kind of affliction.  However, one could also argue that this list is a kind of amplification describing the life of the saint.

“Ranks” is my best guess as to φάλαγγας, which usually means phalanx, body, 
corps, line (Montanari), the ranks of the army in battle, battle array, main body or camp (Great Scott).  No translation seems right in English.  In Greek, the word is immediately recognizable as a military metaphor, continuing a tradition started in the Old Testament.  This seems to be another example of how the hymnographers look for new synonyms to express oft recurring words.  In this case, the question is how to avoid saying "assemblies," which perhaps was suffering from semantic bleaching.

"Mother unwedded" is not the beginning of this troparion, but “implacable Maiden (αδιάλλακτε Κόρη).”  However, since it seems highly unlikely that our hymnographer meant “implacable,” I decided to drop “implacable Maiden” and replace it with “Mother unwedded and sanctified womb,” which comes from later in the troparion.  

At this point it is worth noting that our hymnographers often invoke the Mother of God or the saint twice or more in the same troparion; this qualifies as a figure of repetition.  We may count such invocations as a kind of Exclamatio, which "is a forme of speech by which the orator through some vehement affection, as either of love, hatred, gladnesse, sorrow, anger, marvelling, admiration, feare, or such like, bursteth foorth into an exclamation or outcrie, signifying thereby the vehement affection or passion of his mind" (Peachum).  I have a notion that this is done to preserve the convoluted metrics of the Byzantine melody (the so-called poetic vocative), though it could be regarded as an attempt, like apostrophe in general, to intensify the emotions (the so-called emotive vocative).

Prayers between Odes 3 and 4.
"Head" refers literally to the head of St. David, which is kept in a reliquary in his monastery.
Kontakion. “Servant” renders θεράπων, which means in Classical Greek henchman 
or companion in arms.  In later Greek it appears to be just a synonym for servant.  I first noticed the word in Archilochos, so its appearance in our hymns initially offended me.  

Ode VII.  

"O Virgin that virginally bore" is a trying pleonasm in English but is (only) apparently not a pleonasm in Greek (τεκοῦσα, ἀνηρότως [lit., "unploughed"], Παρθένε).  

Ode VIII.
"Render merciful" > ἐξευμενίζειν propitiate, make propitious [well-disposed, favorable (OCED)] (Montanari).  In the LXX, appease (Muraoka).