Sandman

The Sandman is a mythical character originating in Germanic and Scandinavian folklore who puts people to sleep and encourages and inspires beautiful dreams by sprinkling magical sand onto their eyes.

In Scandinavian folklore, he is said to sprinkle sand or dust on or into the eyes of children at night to bring on sleep and dreams.

[1] The grit or "sleep" (rheum) in one's eyes upon waking is the supposed result of the Sandman's work the previous night.

E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776–1822) wrote a short story in 1816 titled Der Sandmann, which showed how sinister such a character could be made.

Under each arm he carries an umbrella; one of them, with pictures on the inside, he spreads over the good children, and then they dream the most beautiful stories the whole night.

But the other umbrella has no pictures, and this he holds over the naughty children so that they sleep heavily, and wake in the morning without having dreams at all.In Norway and Sweden, he is called John Blund or Jon Blund ("blunda" is a verb that means both "to shut one's eyes" and "to keep one's eyes shut", and "[en] blund" is a noun that means both "[an] occurrence of eyes shut" and "[an] occurrence of sleep"), and in the Netherlands, Belgium and parts of southern Africa, he is referred to as "Klaas Vaak".

[5] The East German stop motion children's television programme Unser Sandmännchen (Our Little Sandman), based on Hans Christian Andersen's Ole Lukøje character and the story by E. T. A. Hoffmann, has been broadcast since 1959, along with a West German version which was discontinued after reunification.

He would arrive on a cloud driven by his friend Sandman (“Le marchand de sable” in French) playing a flute as the sun set, and would only leave once he'd accompanied the children to bed.

At the end of every episode, Nounours would say “Bonne nuit les petits” (which means “Good night, little ones”) before Sandman created a light shower of sand, putting the two siblings, Nicolas and Pimprenelle, to sleep.

The bear and Sandman would then take their leave on the same cloud, once Nounours had climbed back up the ladder that he'd descended at the beginning of the episode.

The Sandman appears in The Smurfs episodes "Darkness Monster" and "Lazy's Nightmare", voiced by Frank Welker.

[10] In Marvel Mystery Comics, the Sandman lives in the Land of Dreams, which is located in the Realm of Fairies within the potentially imaginary world of Nowhere.

"Sandmann" by Oomph!, "Sandman" by Manchester-based duo Hurts, the 1971 song "Sandman" by America and the version of the lullaby "Morningtown Ride" recorded by The Seekers[17] and is mentioned briefly in the songs "Headfirst Slide into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet" by Fall Out Boy and "Farewell and Goodnight" from the Smashing Pumpkins album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

American rapper ASAP Rocky released a song called Sandman on his 2021 re-release of his debut mixtape Live.