Sandman prior to modern fantasy
Jun. 14th, 2010 03:11 pmMany modern popular fantasy stories reference a mythical figure, sandman, along with other more famous characters such as death. Notable are Gaiman's Sandman, passing references in Pratchett, and a lot of comic different heroes based on the same theme (except for the Spiderman one, who is based on being made out of sand).
However, I'd never ever seen any PRIOR reference to this character. I would have said Pratchett made it up, except that there were references elsewhere that all accorded.
Apparently, the base myth is that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandmanthe sandman who has a large sack of sand, which he sprinkles in children's eyes to give sleep or good dreams.
The bit I didn't realise, which made the idea make no sense at all, is that sleepie[1] is supposed to be the residue of the sand, which is presumably why sand was involved at all.
The point
However, today, I reread one of the Wishing Chair small children's books by Enid Blyton, that I pre-inherited from Mum, which was written before many of the others, but referenced the character fairly directly. So the legend really does exist.
(I never heard about the Easter Bunny either, until I grew up and saw parodies of it. We had chocolate eggs, but somehow a rabbit just felt a bit non-traditional.)
Footnote 1
Everyone seems to have a different spelling for "sleepie", the little bits of crust you get under your eye. Being a little geek, I automatically spelled it "sleepie" and assumed it was a mass noun. However, I don't remember mum ever writing it down or anything, and don't recall any specific phrases, so I don't even know if she would agree with me, and I certainly don't have any corroboration from anywhere else. Other people apparently say "sleep", "sleepy", "sleepies", etc.
However, I'd never ever seen any PRIOR reference to this character. I would have said Pratchett made it up, except that there were references elsewhere that all accorded.
Apparently, the base myth is that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandmanthe sandman who has a large sack of sand, which he sprinkles in children's eyes to give sleep or good dreams.
The bit I didn't realise, which made the idea make no sense at all, is that sleepie[1] is supposed to be the residue of the sand, which is presumably why sand was involved at all.
The point
However, today, I reread one of the Wishing Chair small children's books by Enid Blyton, that I pre-inherited from Mum, which was written before many of the others, but referenced the character fairly directly. So the legend really does exist.
(I never heard about the Easter Bunny either, until I grew up and saw parodies of it. We had chocolate eggs, but somehow a rabbit just felt a bit non-traditional.)
Footnote 1
Everyone seems to have a different spelling for "sleepie", the little bits of crust you get under your eye. Being a little geek, I automatically spelled it "sleepie" and assumed it was a mass noun. However, I don't remember mum ever writing it down or anything, and don't recall any specific phrases, so I don't even know if she would agree with me, and I certainly don't have any corroboration from anywhere else. Other people apparently say "sleep", "sleepy", "sleepies", etc.