The Sandman – Folklore and Dark Fantasy Juliette Wood 2015 The exact origins of the Sandman are somewhat murky. Considering how eerie and evocative he is, this is not surprising. On the one hand, this imaginary character sprinkles magic sand into the eyes of good children in order to induce sound sleep or happy dreams. However, the sandman can also be a threatening bogey figure used to frighten disobedient children, and even cause them harm. His first fully developed literary appearance is in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Der Sandmann (1814, translated into English in 1816). He is an important character in Hans Christian Andersen’s literary fairy-tale (1841) about the dream-elf, Ole Lukoje which was translated into English as ‘The Sandman’ (1861), but his best-known contemporary iteration is a series of graphic novels by Neil Gaiman that revolve around a figure called Sandman (DC Comics, Vertigo 1989-1996). Although each author created a different version of the Sandman, Hoffmann, Andersen and Gaiman all drew on mythological beings connected with sleep, dreams, and death, as well as traditional sleep-bringing or threatening figures of nursery lore. If the exact origins and subsequent relationships among these sources are not entirely clear, mutual influence between traditional and literary creations seems likely. Since sleep is associated with dreaming and by extension with death, it is not surprising that sleep-inducing supernatural beings are frequently ambiguous. Classical authors such as Hesiod (fl. 750 and 650 B.C.E.) and Ovid (43 B.C.E.–18 A.C.E.) list Oneiros (Dreams), Hypnos (lat. Somnos, Sleep), Morpheus (shaper [of dreams]), and Thanatos (Death) as the sons of the goddess Nyx (Night). This band of siblings embraces all possible night-time fears. Much darker is the figure of Lamia who, after losing her own children, became a generic demon who kills children. Gaiman’s ‘Sandman’ and his family of immortal ‘Endless’ characters both echo and expand on these classical entities. Frightening beings and bogeymen certainly predate the literary sources. The Oxford English Dictionary lists examples dating from the Elizabethan period of a bugbear ‘invoked to frighten children’ called ‘Raw head and bloody bones’ or sometimes just Bloody Bones, and references to it continued into the twentieth century. A few eighteenth-century references to the Danish figure, Ole Lukoje. predate Andersen’s mid-nineteenth century tale. In the English translation of this tale, he is identified with ‘The Sandman’. But Ole Lukoje (‘eye- closer’) is a less overtly threatening character. He carries two umbrellas. One has pictures to induce dreams and the other is blank to punish naughty children. At the conclusion of the tale, Andersen’s seemingly charming elf reveals that his name is Morpheus and that Thanatos is his brother. The English translation of Andersen’s tale rendered the name of the character as ‘the Sandman’ which suggests that the term may already have referred to a nursery lore figure by the middle of the nineteenth century, although specific references to a Sandman do not appear to be earlier than Hoffmann’s tale. However, there are similar figures related to dreaming in nursery lore. The Scottish poet William Miller (1810- 1872) now famous rhyme about ‘Wee Willie Winkie’ appeared in a collection of Scots nursery poems in 1841. Like a Victorian watchman or town crier, he knocks on the windows asking if the children are in bed. In early illustrations he is an old man, but later illustrations depict him as a sweet-looking little boy If the suggestion that King William III was called ‘Willie Winkie’ in Jacobite songs is correct, however,