Sandman prior to modern fantasy
Jun. 14th, 2010 03:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackMany 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.
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Date: 2010-06-14 02:42 pm (UTC)I'm fairly sure I came across Metallica's 1991 Enter Sandman before I'd read Pratchett or Gaiman writing about him. Or Mr Sandman by the Chordettes if you want a 50s hit single example - although I know the version from the Back to the Future soundtrack best, which puts it at 1985.
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Date: 2010-06-14 04:02 pm (UTC)And Gaiman's Sandman isn't even the first DC character with that name - which should be really obvious, as two previous characters with that title both appear in the series.
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Date: 2010-06-14 04:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-14 03:11 pm (UTC)We also had chocolate rabbits for easter, not chocolate eggs - the eggs were hens' eggs hardboiled and painted and hidden around the house and garden.
The sandman featured in a lot of the stories I heard or read as a child - which reminds me... where can I find the Sam Pig books...
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Date: 2010-06-14 04:14 pm (UTC)We said "sleep" for the eye-gunge. When I was tiny, I got confused by the blessing that thanks God "who takes away sleep from our eyes and slumber from our eyelids", because I would often wake up with "sleep" in my eyes, and obviously it couldn't be the case that God wasn't doing the job properly.
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Date: 2010-06-15 09:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-16 04:04 am (UTC)--Carol
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Date: 2010-06-16 10:02 am (UTC)