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Author
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Comment
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dorisi
Registered User
(8/13/03 10:24 pm)
ezSupporter
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The Sandman
Does anyone know the origin of the sandman - the one who sprinkles dust in children's eyes to make them go tosleep? I've always imagined him as a slightly sinister figure.
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gormghlaith
Registered User
(8/14/03 7:16 am)
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Re: The Sandman
when I look on the internet for this folktale I get lots of sites that tell me the Sandman is Neil Gaimon's Morpheus who is the name of a charecter in the Matrix played by Lawrence Fishburn...a few definitions that simply state the Sandman is a fairytale, but no references other then that... and a horror story from 1817 by E T W Hoffman which can be found here:
gaslight.mtroyal.ca/sandman.htm
sorry I couldnt be of more help...
-Morpheus was the Greek god of dreams but I've never heard of him sprinkling sand in children's eyes...maybe in searching the names of other sleep gods you'll find a thread...on the Neil Gaimon site there is a link to alternate names for his Dream character from different cultures...
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janeyolen
Registered User
(8/14/03 8:04 am)
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Re: The Sandman
The sandman bringing sleep and sprinkling it in your eyes, so that you wake with grit in the corners of your eyes is a popular bit of folklore. Not sure there are actual stories, though, and am far away from my folklore library.
Jane
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Helen
Registered User
(8/14/03 8:39 am)
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Re: The Sandman
Dear Doris:
Your reading of the Sandman as sinister is very accurate: the story that is mentioned earlier in the thread, by Hoffman, is thought to be the source for our current perception of the figure. There, Hoffman wrote (in the character of a nurse putting the protagonist to bed) "Oh! he’s a wicked man, who comes to little children when they won’t go to bed and throws handfuls of sand in their eyes, so that they jump out of their heads all bloody; and he puts them in a bag and takes them to the half-moon as food for his little ones; and they sit there in the nest and have hooked beaks like owls, and they pick naughty little boys’ and girls’ eyes out with them." (Hoffman, E.T.A., "The Sandman." Fantastic Tales, ed. Italo Calvino, Random House, Inc., 1997, p. 37) Maria Tatar has noted that the technique of using bedtime stories to terrify children into obedient behavior was quite prevalent in the German fairy tale tradition (later examples would include the graphic tale of "Slovenly Peter"), using the figure of the Sandman as a primary example. It is interesting to consider the fact that Hoffman’s image of the Sandman became the dominant archetype, and that the details of his description have no basis in traditional folklore – rather, that his image passed into the culture in an example of inverted "secondary literacy." (Tatar, Maria. "Storytelling and Survival: Bedtime Stories from Scheherezade to Peter Pan," James A. Hoffman Memorial Lecture in Comparative Literature, delivered November 15th, 2001.) Hope this helps!
Best,
Helen
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chirons
daughter
Registered User
(8/14/03 9:54 am)
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hansel and gretel sandman
By the mid-1890's, the sandman must well have entered the folklore
from Hoffman as you say, Helen, because Humperdinck's sister, who
wrote the libretto for his opera "Hansel und Gretel,"
included a small passage for him. He is benign, a little old hunched
man with a sack of golden sand which he sprinkles around (but not
in their eyes) to make them dream sweetly; then they say their prayers,
and fourteen angels surround them while they sleep. It's a sweet,
gentle scene, as it's customarily staged, with no fear of sleeping
out in the big dark woods at all (I sang Hansel once). Sendak, who
created a very dark and Grimm-like set for a production of the opera,
complained "It's perfectly plain that Humperdinck's sister
did this. She totally emasculated that story." Including the
Sandman, apparently.
(I remember we used to joke, in that college production I was in, that the sandman could make the kiddies go to sleep with a sock full of sand, and not even take the sand out of the sock: WHOMP! Not so far off, then.)
www.peabody.jhu.edu/conce...endak.html
Discussion of Sendak production here -- worth looking at.
Edited by: chirons daughter at: 8/14/03 10:24 am
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Blackwolf
Unregistered User
(8/14/03 7:05 pm)
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Sandman = Bogeyman?
Just a thought which struck me as I was reading through the thread...
Is the Sandman the same as the Bogeyman? Or are they similar in nature?
Blackwolf
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gormghlaith
Registered User
(8/15/03 5:05 am)
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Re: Sandman = Bogeyman?
I think the bogeyman and the sandman are only similiar in their use to control children. The bogeyman had many different names- bogey, bugbear, bugaboo, boogeyman, booger- and occupations- bog haunting, tormenting of liars- before it was taken up as a monster that visited bad children.
Besides being a figure from English folklore, the origin of the name, or so I read online, comes from Scottish turnip jack-o-lanterns (bogies), or pirates from Indonesia and Malaysia (bugis men) or even Napolean himself (called Boney by the British and then corrupted). I think the bogeyman is older then all of those claims... but anyway, though he may be kissing cousin to the Sandman, the bogeyman remains a seperate entity in folklore (though they may blend in the folklore of terrifying children as a disciplinary tool!).
Edited by: gormghlaith at: 8/15/03 5:06 am
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Aural13
Registered User
(8/15/03 10:09 pm)
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Re: The Sandman
what does "kissing cousin" mean?
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gormghlaith
Registered User
(8/16/03 8:47 am)
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for Aural13
from merriam-webster
Main Entry: kissing cousin
Function: noun
Date: 1941
1 : a person and especially a relative whom one knows well enough to kiss more or less formally upon meeting
2 : one that is closely related in kind to something else
I was using the second definition, as seeing the sandman and bogeyman kiss cheeks would probably be too horrifying to survive.
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Nalo
Registered User
(8/16/03 1:17 pm)
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Re: for Aural13
Heh. I always thought that "kissing cousin" meant someone
distantly enough related to you that the courts and the church considered
it permissible for you to marry.
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