Origin Stories: The Sandman

Sand Beach, ME

A large shadow cascades over the room as a figure sweeps past the night light. Hovering over the bed and the child within, they pull out a pouch and carefully sprinkle its contents over the sleeping child. With sand dusting their eyes, the child dreams of unicorns, faeries, their family, and friends. They dream of fantastical places that fill them with warm feelings, and when they wake, they rub the grit from their eyes, and see no trace of the figure who visited them in the night.

So goes at least one version of the Sandman story. I can’t recall when I first learned of it, but for as far back as my memories go, I can still hear the sound of Mr. Sandman playing on my father’s record player. I was sharing this story with a group of friends and was surprised to discover that none of them knew it.

Instead, they were familiar with Neil Gaiman’s comic book series The Sandman, which was recently adapted by Netflix. Although diverging from original folklore, Gaiman’s series is heavily inspired by Sandman mythos, featuring a lord of storytelling and dreams as the main character.

The original Sandman story can be traced back to Europe at least 200 years ago with the first written version credited to German author E.T.A. Hoffman’s Der Sandmann. Like so many German fairytales, this one had a sinister take on the Sandman. According to Hoffman, the Sandman threw sand into the eyes of children who would not fall asleep, causing their eyes to fall out. The Sandman then collected those eyes and escaped to the dark side of the moon, where he reportedly fed those eyes to his own children.

Almost all other tellings of the Sandman’s story are kinder. The Sandman is depicted in Scandinavian folklore as a benevolent man named John Blund or Jon Blund, who uses his sprinkling of sand only to help children fall asleep and dream the night away. In 1841, infamous fairytale author Hans Christian Andersen depicted him as a man named Ole Lukøje, the brother of Death, who rewarded good children with good dreams and punished bad children with no dreams at all. In other parts of the world, the Sandman is referred to as Klaas Vaak though his story is much the same.

My favorite part of the Sandman’s story is that it serves as a direct explanation for something that happens to everyone. Everyone sleeps and everyone wakes up with those little crusties in the corners of their eyes. Nowadays, we understand those sleepy seeds to be the accumulation of dust and dirt that has been pushed out of our eyes overnight, but back then? There’s no better story to tell your confused child than the gunk in their eyes comes from a mystical man, who has sprinkled them with sand.