Sandman
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
A candy-colored clown they call the sandman --"In Dreams" (1963) by Roy Orbison |
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The Sandman is a character in popular European folklore who brings good sleep and dreams by sprinkling magic sand onto the eyes of children. E.T.A. Hoffmann wrote an inverse depiction of the lovable character in a story called Der Sandmann, which showed how sinister such a character could be made. According to the protagonist's nurse, he threw sand in the eyes of children who wouldn't sleep, with the result of those eyes falling out and being collected by the Sandman, who then takes the eyes to his iron nest on the moon, and uses them to feed his children. The protagonist of the story grows to associate this nightmarish creature with the genuinely sinister figure of his father's associate Coppelius.