Short Stuff: The Sandman

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, 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

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 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 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, 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. 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, 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, 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, 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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

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. 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 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 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

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? 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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 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