Mr. Sandman bring me a dream

 

Mr. Sandman bring me a dream

Bedtime. For children, that moment always comes too soon. My father told so-called bedtime stories, but he invariably ended them with the words: “And then came a piggy with a long snout, and he blew my story over and out.” The words made me furious. I hated that piggy and his snout. The result was that I lay awake for at least another hour, silently cursing the little pig. Lying awake in bed is one of the worst things that can happen to you as a child.

What I needed was a visit from the Sandman, the sleep bringer. The Sandman is a fairytale figure that appears in many folkloric tales. In French he is called Le Marchand de Sable, in German Das Sandmännchen, in Dutch Klaas Vaak. According to legend, the Sandman lives on the moon, but at children's bedtime he descends to earth, seated on a large bird or a flying bed, and sprinkles a few grains of sand into the children's eyes so that they fall asleep and have beautiful dreams. For this reason, children must wash their faces early in the morning: otherwise, they would walk around all day with grains of sand in their eyes and be sleepy.

The Danish writer of fairy tales Hans Christian Andersen wrote a famous story about a certain Ole Lukøje and in some publications you may read that the Sandman (in all his variations, including Klaas Vaak) is derived from this Ole, but this is clearly untrue: the Sandman is a mythical figure from Scandinavian folklore that goes back to the times of the Vikings, and it’s more likely that the author based his Ole Lukøje on stories that were told to him while he was a child. The oldest recorded instance of the name Klaas Vaak in the Dutch language dates from 1726, long before Andersen (1805-1875) wrote his fairy tale (*1), and there’s also a story by German author E.T.A. Hoffman called Der Sandmann (1816) that predates Anderson’s story by twenty-five years (*2)

Ole Lukøje also differs greatly from the Sandman we know from the oldest stories: the Sandman is often depicted as an old man with a long beard, a kind of Santa Claus, and he is a bit sneaky; he does his work in complete silence. Even his little house on the moon is invisible; it is located on the side of the moon that is never lit, the dark side of the moon, so to speak (*3). Ole, on the other hand, is a little rascal and a great storyteller who keeps his stories in his umbrella: when he opens his umbrella, the stories flutter down onto the sleepy children. He also sprinkles milk, not sand, into the children's eyes.

Ole is an otherwise well-known Danish first name; Luk-øje means: shut-eyes. So his name is actually Ole Shut-Eyes! Brilliant! The derivation of the name Klaas Vaak is more prosaic: Klaas’s family name is derived from *vaec*, an Old Dutch word for ‘sleep’: in children’s language, people still speak of ‘vaak hebben’ – literally: to have 'vaak', that is: to be sleepy. The Swedish variation, Jon Blund, has a similar derivation, blunda meaning 'close your eyes'.

A little man visiting the children in the evening is naturally a bit of a creepy idea, which is why it is always emphasized that The Sandman is a friendly little fellow. In Russian, he is therefore called Смешной человек, which means the Funny Little Man (*4). In Romania, the sandman goes by the name Moş Ene and looks like Santa Claus (and also a bit like our Sandman), but instead of presents, he brings sleep to the children.

The Scots, always a bit peculiar, have their very own sleep bringer named Wee Willie Winkie. He doesn't sprinkle sand or milk in the children's eyes but walks around in his nightgown and knocks on the windows to warn parents that it is bedtime.

WeeWillie Winkie first appears in a nursery rhyme. The first verse reads as follows:

 

Wee Willie Winkie runs through the town,

Up stairs and down stairs in his nightgown,

Tapping at the window, crying at the lock,

Are the children in their bed, for it's past ten o'clock?

 

Sweet dreams

 

Notes:

(*1) https://neerlandistiek.nl/2017/04/etymologie-klaas-vaak/ (in Dutch)

(*2) Hoffman’s tale is more of a horror story; when a small boy starts asking questions about the Sandman, he is told: “Don't you know that yet? He is a wicked man, who comes to children when they won't go to bed, and throws a handful of sand into their eyes, so that they start out bleeding from their heads. He puts their eyes in a bag and carries them to the crescent moon to feed his own children, who sit in the nest up there. They have crooked beaks like owls so that they can pick up the eyes of naughty human children.” See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sandman_(short_story)

(*3) So now we finally know what this famous Pink Floyd album is about

(*4) The original name is песочный человек, which simply means 'sandman', but that name has become somewhat less popular due to a film of the same name about a sandman that should rather be classified as a horror genre.