SOMNILOQUENCE.—SOMNAMBULISM.
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Dendy, Walter Cooper
“It is a sleepy language; and thou speak’st
Out of thy sleep.”
Tempest.
“Doct. You see, her eyes are open.
Gent. Ay, but their sense is shut.”
“Doct. A great perturbation in nature. To receive at once the benefit of sleep, and do the effect of watching.”
Macbeth.
Ev. In the common dream, ideas float through the mind, but the body is passive. When the power of expressing these ideas by speech is added, it is somniloquence. When there is the conscious, yet powerless, will to move, it is incubus. When the unconscious power of moving in accordance with the ideas or wishes of the dream exists, it is somnambulism.
The common dreams of sleep are not unfolded to us until the waking recollections of the dreamer relate them; but the matter of a dream may be half developed during its existence, by the curious propensity to unconscious talking and walking in the sleep.
Sleep-talking is the slightest of these phenomena, and, indeed, closely resembles the speaking reveries of some absent people, and the raving of a maniac. The sleep is, at this time, little deeper than a reverie.
The voice of the somniloquist is usually natural, but as again, in the cases of mania and of delirious excitement, a common voice may become sweetly melodious, and there will be an imparted fluency allied to the inspiration of the improvisatore.
Indeed, in some young ladies, subject to hysteria, I have known, at certain periods as it were, a new accomplishment—a style of singing which was far beyond their power in waking moments. Dr. Dewar relates a case of a girl who, when awake, discovered no knowledge of astronomy or the sciences in any way; but when she was asleep she would define the rotations of the seasons, using expressions the most apt to the subject, such as “the globe is now set agee.” It is probable that this was the memory in slumber of some geographical lesson which she had heard, but did not remember while her senses were active, that is, in her waking moments. And an American lady, during a fever, commenced a course of nocturnal prating, composing most eloquent sermons, chiefly made up, however, of remembered texts of Scripture.
I am informed, too, that a lady of Edinburgh, during her somnolent attacks, recited somewhat lengthy poems; and it was curious to notice that each line commenced with the final letter of the preceding.
These sleep-talkings are sometimes the mere lispings of an idiot; although Astrophel, perchance, may contend that the following, written down from the lips of a servant-maid, is a proof of special inspiration, converting a rustic girl into an improvisatrice.
“You may go home and wash your hose,
And wipe the dew-drops from your nose,
And mock no maiden here.
For you tread down grass, and need not;
Wear your shoes, and speed not,
And clout leather’s very dear;
But I need not care, for my sweetheart
Is a cobbler.”
I have heard this trash cited as a proof of facility of composition in slumber. You do not believe it such; like other specimens, it was a ruse of a wanton girl to excite admiration. In the magnetic somnambulism of Elizabeth Okey, that cunning little wench, who was the prima buffa of the magnetic farces enacted at the North London Hospital, would often skip about and sing snatches of equal elegance:
“I went into a tailor’s shop
To buy a suit of clothes;
But where the money came from,
G—— Almighty knows.”
These are indeed the very burlesque of somniloquence. And yet Okey was an invalid, and presumed on the credulity of those who ministered to her.
True somniloquence is often preceded by a cataleptic state; and in girls like this, the senses are often so dull, that the firing of a pistol close to the ear does not rouse them, until the poetic fit is over.
Cast. Were sleep-talking more common, it would indeed be a very dangerous propensity. If the confessor were to prate in his sleep of the peccadilloes of the fair penitents that kneel at his confessional; if the minister on his couch were to divulge his state secrets or his fine political schemes; where would be the tranquillity of domestic or national society? Yet the lips of the love-sick maiden have not seldom whispered in sleep her bosom’s secret; and sometimes the unconscious tongue has awfully betrayed even the blood-stain on the hand.
Thus did the ill-mated Parisina of Byron:
“Fever’d in her sleep she seems,
And red her cheek with troubled dreams;
And mutters she, in her unrest,
A name she dare not breathe by day.”
The fate of Eugene Aram, I believe, may be imputed to such an unfortunate propensity; and in Lady Macbeth’s “Out, damned spot!” was confessed her participation in the murder of Duncan and the grooms.
Somewhat like this, too, was the half-sleeping exclamation of Jarvis Matcham, after he had committed the murder of the drummer boy. Starting from his bed, when roused by the waiter, his first words were: “My God! I did not kill him.”
Ev. A dream will sometimes half wake even a child to a state of terror, although children are with difficulty completely roused. I have known instances in which children would sit up in bed, with their eyes open, sobbing, and talking, and staring, in a sort of trance; nay, they will sometimes start from bed, but still asleep, and, after a time becoming calm, they have again composed themselves to slumber.
I have known sleep-talkers, who have not remembered one iota of their wanderings when awake; and even the ecstatic somnambulist, who pretends to prophecy wisdom, recollects nothing when the ecstacy is over. It is clear also, that the mind varies in sleep and waking, in regard to its memory; for it has been proved that persons who often talk in their sleep, have renewed the exact points of a subject which terminated their last sleep-talking, although, in the waking interval, it was to them oblivion.
Somnambulism is the most perfect paradox among the phenomena of sleep, as it exhibits actions without a consciousness of them; indeed, so complete a suspension of sensibility, that contact, nay, intense inflictions, do not produce that mental consciousness which is calculated to excite alarm, or even attention.