Or with Orion did you strive—though him I deem a friend?"
"Nor with the stars, nor with the moon, did I in strife contend,
Nor with Orion did I fight, whom for your friend I hold,
But guarded in a silver cot a child as bright as gold."
The Greeks have a curious way of looking at sleep: they seem absorbed in the thought of what dreams may come—if indeed the word dream rightly describes their conception of that which happens to the soul while the body takes its rest—if they do not rather cling to some vague notion of a real severance between matter and spirit during sleep.
The mothers of La Bresse (near Lyons) invoke sleep under the name of "le souin-souin." I wish I could give here the sweet, inedited melody which accompanies these lines:
Le poupon voudrait bien domir;
Le souin-souin ne veut pas venir.
Souin-souin, vené, vené, vené;
Souin-souin, vené, vené, donc!