Short Stuff: The Sandman

Mr. Sandman, bring me a dream! But who is the sandman? We'll tell you in today's edition of short stuff. 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's Chuck, and there's Jerry. Let's get busy. Bring me
a dream, Josh. That's a good song. It's catchy. It is.
It's been in some movies, including Halloween. Right, played during
the end credits of Halloween, and I can't remember for

(00:27):
the life of me, I know that there's an even
better example of it. I can't remember, Chuck, I'm sorry.
Back to the future. Oh really, yeah? Was it the credits?
Uh no, it was night you can only be used
in the credits. Uh no. Marty goes back to and
I believe it's one of the first songs he hears.
He goes into Hill Valley and um, that song very famously,

(00:49):
Mr Sandman is what we're talking about. Everyone was a big,
big hit in the year nineteen fifty five from the coredets.
Nice that's a great band name to the cordette. Yeah, acapello, ladies.
What more do you want in the nineteen fifties? Uh? Nothing? Um,
maybe civil rights that kind of thing, but at least

(01:11):
you could hear that song while you're fighting for right. Um.
So this this Sandman that's mentioned in the Mr Sandman
is actually not a fifties um uh a character. It
was actually from way earlier, probably out of Central and
Eastern Europe, and it was one of those very famous
characters that arose from Central and Eastern Europe's preoccupation with

(01:34):
the duality of darkness and light in the same human being,
just like in Santa Claus. That's right, when you wake
up in the morning and uh, you have we call
them eye buggers in our house. What do you call him? Sleep?
I guess you have sleep in your eye crusties. We
don't have an official house name for it, but that's

(01:55):
these are names have always called it. Yeah, sleep, that's
what we called it in our house growing up. Have
sleep in your eye? I spink. That's the last time
I had a house name for it. Yeah, so I've
called the eye bogogers. I don't know where I got that,
but that's technically that's different. Huh. An eye booger occurs
during the daytime. Sleep is like the crusty stuff that
you wake up with, But not in my house. Oh hey, Chuck,

(02:17):
let me ask you this. Have you ever woken up
with such a copious amount of sleep um or eye
boogers whatever you want. I don't say what you're about
to say that, like your your your eyes crusted shut
like that? Has that ever happened to you? No, it's atrocious.
You've had that happen. You have to be very sick.

(02:40):
But yes, it has happened to me before where I'm like,
I can't I can't open my eye. Oh that's so gross.
Well there's a name for it. There's a real scientific
name of that. Crust. Uh r h e u M.
Is that pronounced room? I think room? Yeah, all right, um,
that's the scientific name. It's a discharge that dries up,

(03:01):
you know, it comes out of your eyes. It dries
up when you're asleep. And if you are from northern
Europe and it was you know, a few hundred years ago,
you might be told, it might have been told that
the sandman had come and visited you and sprinkled sand
in your eyes while you slept, or magic dust at least,
then that's that's what it was. And you would think,

(03:22):
maybe as a child, like why would a sandman want
to come and sprinkle magic sand in my eyes to
make my eyes crusted? It doesn't make any sense. Well,
apparently this is a byproduct of the mechanism by which
the Sandman spun your dreams. It was the Sandman who
is responsible for your dreams, which is why the Cordets
asked the sand Man to bring them a dream, because
that's where your dreams came from, the Sandman. That's right. Uh,

(03:47):
we don't know exactly where the Sandman comes from, but
we do have some ideas, uh, and we're going to
talk about those right after this break. Oh alright, so

(04:22):
I promised the origin of the Sandman. We don't know
for positives, it was not metallica, but UM. In eighteenth
century German dictionaries that was UM. Like this is the
first time I believe it was on the paper, on paper,

(04:42):
On the paper, I just turned into a German. What's
wrong with Todd? He's on the paper, dear sanmun coompt
means Sandman is coming. And the whole idea was that
the Sandman would come along and parents would tell the
story UM in dur Many. Although that one woman says
she didn't think it was German folklore, right, she thinks

(05:03):
that it kind of became popularized in Germany much like UM.
You know, like our conception of Santa Clause probably came
from that area, but it was maybe from a different
area altogether, like maybe Norway or Finland or something. But
it was just, you know, it was the Germans, the
German immigrants who really brought the concept to America. All right,
well that's what she means, gotcha, because that didn't make

(05:25):
sense to me, um regardless. In eighteen it was a
writer named E. T. A. Hoffman UM that wrote Dear Sun,
Dr Sondman with two ends, Um, and it's you know,
it's just like the Grimm's Brothers stuff. It's this horrifying
nursery rhyme, or not nursery rhyme, but sort of a story,
a kid's story, um, about a nurse telling a story

(05:47):
about this creature who throws sand in your eyes of
little kids who don't go to sleep, and your eyes
fall out of your sockets. Then the sandman collects those eyeballs,
but some men a bag and lives on the dark
side of the moon, goes home and carries them there
and then feeds those eyeballs to his children. There you go,
that's what happens with the sand man. And it makes

(06:10):
at It makes a lot of sense because especially if
you were eighteenth or early nineteenth century German um one
good way to get kids to go to sleep was
to just terrify them with the story. But it also
it provides a physical function too, because what is the
appropriate reaction when somebody tells you something like that that
that person exists and is going to come to your

(06:32):
bedside soon. It's to shut your eyes tightly and to
keep them shut ostensibly until you wake up in the morning.
So it's pretty clever if you really think about it. Sure,
But the dark side of the moon thing, that just
that's I mean, like icing on the cake. You know.
It just makes me feel good knowing that in like
eighteen parents were struggling with putting their kids to bed.

(06:53):
I think they always have. I think so you don't
think about that though. I think that from the time
that it be aim not okay socially to lay on
your kid until they were unconscious and then went to sleep,
from that moment on it became a struggle to get
your kid to go to sleep. Yeah, very interesting. Uh,
flash forward a bit to one when none other than

(07:16):
Hans Christian Anderson put out a fairy tale. Do you
want to pronounce this? I can Are you ready for this?
I was practicing. I looked it up. Really, Ula lukey wow,
and it's not dead on, but it's it's okay. Yeah.
Anytime I see uh one of those letters that looks
like the null set, yeah, I have no idea what

(07:37):
to do with it. But we finally know how to
pronounce ola ula. So yeah, you remember in the Lego
episode we call them old Kirk Christiansen. Oh, that's right,
it was Ula Kirk Christensen. Yep. That's so finally, after
basically a decade, we have corrected ourselves that that is
the inventor of Lego's name pronounced correctly. Uh. Yeah, because

(07:58):
I remember joking like, oh Kirk Christensen. Yeah, and we
met a guy wanted um, I can't remember, some telecommunications
company and he was the president and we call them
oh Andy. They corrected us, but it was just lost
on us that that was not right. And I think
we up to this point, up to this moment, we've
called everybody Ohl. All right, So what is it again? La?

(08:21):
Uh Ula Luke? Are you okay? So that's the story,
that's the fairy tale. It means old shut your eye. Yeah,
that's a good title. I think so too. But it's
weird that CON's Christian Anderson doesn't just call him the Sandman.
He does everything but call him the Sandman. Well because
while accounts he got it from der son Man, right, yeah,
for sure. But I mean, was he worried he was

(08:43):
ripping off their son man or something. I'm not sure
why he didn't just call it theirs mine if if
the san mon or Sandman was already a widely recognized figure,
I don't know, uh, at any rate. In the story,
um or luking Good very good said with dress and silk, Jamie,

(09:06):
very nice, stylish, and would carry an umbrella, colorful umbrella.
Um And I guess, I mean it doesn't really say
what do you do the same thing? Basically, he would
not he would squirt milk in your yes, rather than
sand which is another It's like, come on, Anderson, your
beloved children's author, you can just go with the original. Yeah.

(09:29):
And he also it says in here that he introduces
a boy in the story to death and Sexuality. Right.
It is a little odd, but it is typical like
children's fairy tale, nursery rhyme, children's story kind of thing
where there's this weird duality between people who are really

(09:51):
really kind, they also have a shadow side, or it
can be a shadow alter ego, like with Santa Um
And I think what was Santa's alter ego was a
black Peter. I don't remember at the very least it
was Crampus, but I know that some of those traditions
there was like a dark figure Um that would like
that was the guy who would steal the children who

(10:14):
had been naughty, and then it eventually translated into Santa
leaving Cole and your stocking. If you've been naughty prior
to that, it was like you'd just be kidnapped and
eaten by Santa's like heavy hitter. This is the same thing.
The Sandman has the same thing. And in this Hans
Christian Andersen's story, uh Ula has an alter ego, a
brother who, rather than visiting the kid's bedsides to bring

(10:36):
their dreams, visits everybody's bedside once to bring death. And
his name is also Ula Luke a. Yeah, he would
walk in say exit light, inter night forever and take
your stand. It's often never never land forever kid. Oh,
I always thought it was take my hand. Well, I
think there that's a different verse. Right. Okay, I'm I

(11:00):
got in trouble last time I talked about Metallica on
the show. So the one of the one of the
you did for what? I think I said that that
album stunk or something. It probably did depending on the
album we were talking about, unless it was Injustice for
All or any preceding album. Yeah, Ride the Lightning. That
was a good one, still holds up. Agreed. The another

(11:23):
verse goes, don't steal singles from our band. But in
the end, the story of Hans Christian Anderson wrote was
just like all the Grim's fairy tales. There's always this dark,
awful thing and it's usually embedded in a lesson to
teach your children. And in this case, the lesson is

(11:45):
go to sleep now because I'm tired and we're both tired,
so we're gonna end this short stuff right here. That's right.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff works dot Com