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.