Key Takeaways
You know when you come alive up in the daybreak and you have all that crusted stuff in your eyes ? That ’s call genus Rheum , and it ’s just discharge that comes out of your centre and dry out up while you ’re asleep . But if you were a child living in central or northern Europe a couple one C ago , grownups would probably tell you you awaken up in the dawn with curmudgeonly eyelashes because the Sandman had been to your bedside , sprinkling his magical sleepyheaded dust in your eyes , spinning the yarns of your dreams . This may or may not have been cause for dismay .
Have you ever attempt to get a little kid to go to sleep ? It can be one of the most aggravating experience of your life because much of the time you ’re more commonplace than the tiddler whose bedtime it is . What strategies work easily for lulling kids into never-never land ? established sapience says you should sing them a song or tell them a narration . This was most likely how the Sandman came to be : a fictional character made up by parents for the purpose of tranquillise their children .
But just like our relationship with a raucous , watchful small fry is complicated , the figure of the Sandman is n’t all charming , benevolent snooze junk . It move around out , as much as the Sandman is to catch some Z’s as Santa is to gift giving , Sandman ’s shadow side is at least as conspicuous asSanta’spenchant for shady , around - the - clock surveillance and the distribution of switches and ember to naughty minor .
" It ’s a bit difficult to trace his origins because stories about the Sandman are part of an oral custom , " says Dr. Maria Tatar , prof of German Studies , Folklore , and Children ’s Literature atHarvard University . " I do n’t think you could trace the Sandman to Denmark or Germany . I feel positive that there are similar figures in other civilisation because so many of the merry , baby - friendly creatures are shadowed by a disciplinary vicious person . Who invented the Sandman ? Who knows ! "
18th-Century Origin
The Sandman ’s first maraud onto the Sir Frederick Handley Page was in eighteenth - centuryGerman dictionaries , which in brief described the German idiom " der Sandmann kommt " — " Sandman is coming " — which was used to tease particularly sleepyheaded - search children . The first story about the Sandman and his behaviour was put out in 1818 by German author E.T.A Hoffman . " Der Sandmann " begins with an exacerbate nursemaid tell a history about a mythical beast who project guts in the eyes of little nipper who wo n’t go to kip , causing them to fall out of their socket . The Sandman then collects the eyeball in a sack and behave them to his home on the dark side of the moon , where he feeds them to his fry .
" ' Der Sandmann ' became an of import report in psychoanalytic circle because Freud made so much of it in his essay ' The Uncanny , ' " says Tatar . " Hoffman ’s story is a poove tale for grownups , really — his Sandman is this dark , predatory monster . It by all odds was n’t drop a line for children . "
In 1841 , Hans Christian Andersen release a fairy tale ( thatwasmeant for a untried audience ) foretell " Ole Lukøie " — Ole being a Danish first name and Lukøie translating to " shut your heart . " The eponymic character , always dress in silk pajama and carrying a groovy colorful umbrella , is never bear on to by Andersen as the Sandman , but " The Sandman " is the deed of conveyance most English translations put to the faerie tale .
" It is a very foreign write up , " says Dr. Jacob Bøggild , a professor in theHans Christian Andersen Centerat the University of Southern Denmark , in an e-mail . " Andersen ’s Ole seems to be a benevolent figure , but he does introduce the boy in the write up , called Hjalmar , to death and gender . But he does not give sand into the eyes of children , he squirts milk into them ! asunder from that , it is not a story with a regular plot but more of a sequence of dreamlike tableau vivant . "
It should be advert that at the goal of Andersen ’s taradiddle , Hjalmar discover Ole Lukøie has a brother who , rather of coming Nox after night to our bedsides , make for dreams , only visits each person once , bringing Death . His name is also Ole Lukøie .
" What ’s interesting about the Sandman stories is they cue me a bit of the children ’s verses and lullabies we babble to children which are soothing and docile , but there ’s a stark , violent side to them , too , " enunciate Tatar . " Somehow it seems to mirror our ambivalence towards children . We adore them and require to narrate them blue , lovely storey , but they drive us crazy at time . We — and especially our ancestors — resorted to monitory and corrective story like Little Red Riding Hood , in which the Friedrich August Wolf will eat you up if you swan from the track . In the Hoffman storey , if you do n’t go to sleep , the Sandman ’s go to come and scratch out your eye . "
And if strong - arming children into settling down to sleep is n’t why the European parents and nurses of honest-to-goodness secern cautionary bedtime chronicle , maybe it ’s because they wanted to devise their little I for aliveness ’s hardships .
" The unusual matter about the Sandman is , he ’s a lot giving than you are — there ’s no defeat him , " tell Tatar . " You ca n’t face him down like you could the villains in fairy tales . There ’s no happily ever after except falling asleep , giving in . He ca n’t be decapitate or immobilize or pull a fast one on like other villains . It ’s hard to differentiate fairy story , myth , legend and all of that , but in a way he belongs more to the land of myth than pouf narration . "
