Sandman
The Sandman is one in European mythology is moved legendary figure . According to tradition, he visits the children in the evening, sprinkles sleep-inducing sand in their eyes and lets the dream arise. You rub the sleeping sand out of the corner of your eye in the morning. The serial figure of the little sandman as a story-maker, created in Germany on this basis , achieved international media popularity.
root
The Celtic religion knows the genius cucullatus , a guardian spirit and hooded demon .
In Greek mythology , the Oneiroi bring dreams. They are a group of demons, sons or brothers of Hypnos who resemble bats. Where Morpheus , son of Hypnos, the god of sleep as the responsible god of dreams and visions. He presides over his brothers Phobetor (from Greek phobia , φόβος “fear”, for nightmare ) and Phantasos . This is how people receive messages in dreams. For example, Morpheus appears at the behest of the sleeping Alcyone , who is expecting her husband Keyx , in his guise, since he has been shipwrecked. The entrance to the cave of Morpheus is overgrown with numbing herbs such as the opium poppy . For the Teutons , sleep and death were siblings. Both were referred to as sandman ( messenger ).
Motif story
European literature knows Morpheus as the dream god who disperses “slumber grains”, although the identification is not always clear; The sleep god Hypnos is also given this role from time to time.
In the tradition, two variants of the sandman figure can be clearly distinguished: on the one hand the eye-tearing demon, on the other hand the "eye-closer" who fabricates the dreams.
The figure of the sand seller, a traveling trader who sold white sand as a cleaning agent, was also incorporated into the idea of the sandman.
The child shock
Western European folklore comes up with a multitude of frightening figures whose purpose it was to bring the children to the way home or to sleep at home in the evening, such as the goat-like night buck , the night crab , the night giger , the Bummelux , the night trotting or in the Hunsrück Naachsil (night owl). Their characteristics have been incorporated to varying degrees in the literary formation of the well-known Sandman figure.
ETA Hoffmann's (1776–1822) Schauernovelle Der Sandmann designs the Sandman figure, a typical traditional child horror figure whose appearance spreads fear and horror. She uses sand as a weapon that is dangerous and injurious to the eyes. In contrast to the enlightened parents, an old nurse describes the questioning child as drastically as the sandman
- “ Bad man, he comes to the children when they don't want to go to bed and throws sand in their eyes full of hands so that they jump out bloody on their heads, he then throws them into the sack and carries them into the crescent to etch for his Children; they sit there in the nest and have crooked beaks, like owls, with which they peck at the naughty little human children ”.
The dream bringer
The figure of the sandman known today is essentially traced back to the Biedermeier mitigations of the German tradition he was familiar with by the Danish fairy tale poet Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875). Andersen chooses the name of the well-known Danish figure of Ole Lukøje ("Ole Eye Closer") for the title character . He visits the children regularly before going to bed and closes their eyes with “sweet milk” and tells a story.
- There is no one in the whole world who knows so many stories as Ole Luk-Oie! He can tell well.
From the two umbrellas he brought with him, he spans the illustrated one over the "good" children, whereupon they sink into lively dreams, the other - without pictures - over the naughty ones who then dream nothing at all.
variants
In addition to the Danish figure of Ole Lukøje , the figure of Jon Blund is known in the Scandinavian countries as the bring to sleep.
Netherlands
In the Netherlands, the traditional Sandmann name Klaas Vaak is traced back to the old Dutch expression vaak hebben for sleeping.
Austria - Tyrol
Pechmandl brings you sleep around Innsbruck . This little man has a rope or string in one pocket and a can full of pitch or tree resin in the other pocket. The Pechmandl secretly sneaks behind the children and strokes a little bit of pine pitch over their eyes. As a result, their eyes immediately close and they fall asleep. It is unclear what the Pechmandl uses his string for. This may indicate that the limbs are completely tied up in sleep.
There was also an old pitch mandrel song in Tyrol. However, this has been lost and only the closing rhyme remains:
- " If it comes Pechmandl with da Schnua (cord), prints the child d 'Aug'n zua ".
Mister Sandman in music
In October 1954 the single Mr. Sandman ( Cadence Records 1247) was released, sung by The Chordettes . Pat Ballard's song became her biggest hit. It hit the US charts on October 20, 1954 and reached number 1, while the single came to number 11 in Great Britain.
The Chordettes was an American a cappella girl group . The vocal quartet had eight top 20 hits in the charts between 1954 and 1961. During this time there was a change from popular music to rock'n'roll. The Chordettes are considered to be the prototype for the numerous girl groups that have come after them.
The song begins with the line of text Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream / Make him the cutest that I've ever seen . An erotic dream or daydream is discussed .
Enter Sandman from Metallica works on the subject of Sandmann . Here the sandman is the specter that brings nightmares. Also nightmares, namely the fear of imaginary monsters and an evil sandman, are the subject of Rammstein's My Heart Burns . The song Sandman by the band America also refers to a horror figure, which is to be understood here as a symbol of inner fears.
The ability to bring dreams is also demonstrated in the song Sandmann by the band Oomph! taken up: Here children wish to dream in order to escape reality. In both versions, German and English, the song addresses child poverty.
The German band Saltatio Mortis shows in their song Der Sandmann from the album The Black Basics the ambivalence of the Sandman figure by incorporating both the frightening and the dream-making side. They mainly refer to the Germanic basis of the sandman. The two sides of the Sandman are symbolized in the song, among other things, that the sand is described as white for the dream-bringing and black for the sand that "hollow out" the eyes and kills.
See also
Individual evidence
- ↑ in other mythologies son of Hades .
- ↑ Ovid, Met.XI, 630th
- ↑ “ Soon Morpheus came with soft kicks to the young man's bed and scattered his sleeping grains over him. “ Wilhelm Hauff , Lichtenstein. Kap 20 Lichtenstein in the Gutenberg-DE project
- ↑ Herder: Sleep , in: JG v. Herder's entire works: On Philosophy and History, Vol. 22–23, 1821, p. 162.
- ↑ Nachtteile, 1815, http://de.wikisource.org/wiki/Der_Sandmann
- ↑ http://www.andersen.sdu.dk/forskning/motiver/vismotiv_e.html?id=77
- ↑ Allusion to the product of the opium poppy as a once traditional sleeping aid for children, as well as to the author's morphine consumption
- ↑ Hans Christian Andersen, Complete Fairy Tales. With 125 illustrations based on original drawings by V. Pedersen, cut in wood by E. Kretzschmar. 8th edition Leipzig, 1863, p. 20.
- ^ German Alpine sagas. Collected and edited by Johann Nepomuk Ritter von Alpenburg, Vienna 1861, pp. 118, 119. http://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/oesterreich/tirol/alpenburg/pechmandl.html
- ↑ See David A. Jasen: A Century Of American Popular Music. 1899-1999 . Routledge, New York, NY 2002, p. 134.
- ^ Joel Whitburn: Top Pop Records 1940–1955 . Record Research, Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin 1973, p. 13.
- ↑ In Great Britain, however, the cover version of Dickie Valentine was considerably more successful. On January 22, 1955, four different versions of Mr. Sandman were in the top twenty on the UK charts. See: Dafydd Rees, Barry Lazell, Roger Osborne: 40 Years Of NME Charts . Boxtree Ltd., London 1992, pp. 19-22.
- ↑ Don Tyler: Music Of The Postwar Era . Greenwood Press, Westport, CT 2008, p. 66.
- ↑ http://www.allmusic.com/album/mw0000193675
- ↑ See text of the song Sandmann by Saltatio Mortis .