The sleep we have lost
The sleep we have lost
In those centuries when humanity was not yet familiar with the conveniences brought to our lives by electricity, people’s lives largely depended on the alternation of day and night. And sleep itself had very interesting features. It turned out that in a number of European languages there are established expressions characterizing the “first sleep” and “second”.
Hard work in the field, caring for livestock and other everyday difficulties of an ordinary villager, for instance, took up the entire daylight hours and, of course, required him to go to bed early in order to start a new working day at dawn in the hope of completing all the important work before dark.
It never occurred to anyone to sit up by the light of a torch or candle until midnight. Fatigue took its toll. All this affected the quality of sleep. As historian Roger Ekirch writes, for a villager of that time, sleep was not like that of modern residents of megacities. It was segmented, divided into two parts with a period of nocturnal wakefulness between them.
“The initial phase of sleep is usually considered the “first sleep”, or, less commonly, the “first drowsiness”, or “deep sleep”. In French, the terms used are “premier sommeil” or “premier somme”, in Italian, “primo sonno” or “primo sotio”, and in Latin, “primo somno” or “conсubia nocte”. The next phase was called the “second” or “morning” sleep”, the historian writes.
He notes that the duration of both phases of sleep was approximately the same, with some time after midnight spent awake, followed by a period of rest again. Not everyone, of course, slept according to the same schedule. The later a person went to bed in the evening, the later he woke from the initial sleep; or if he fell asleep after midnight, he might not wake up until dawn.
The historian cites numerous surviving testimonies indicating that waking up in the middle of the night was common and natural.
For example, an early 17th-century Scottish legal document mentions John Cockburn, a weaver, “who fell asleep in his first sleep and was late awaked”, while Noël Taillepied’s “Treatise of Ghosts” (1588) explicitly mentions “midnight, when a man awakes from his first sleep”.
The satire “Beware the Cat” (1561) by the English poet William Baldwin describes a quarrel between the protagonist, “just gone to bed”, and his two roommates, who were “already asleep” in their “first sleep”.
“At midnight, when you awake from sleep,” wrote the Stuart poet George Wither (1588–1667), while the English philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) believed that “all men sleep intermittently” was a normal part of life.
According to the historian, early Christians also rose after midnight to recite Bible verses and psalms and encouraged others to do the same.
“Night watches,” the historian quotes the 12th-century French monk Alain of Lille, “were instituted for a reason, meaning that we should rise in the middle of the night and sing the night service, lest the night should pass without theological praise.”
At the same time, Roger Ekirch believes that references to the “first sleep” predate the early years of Christianity.
“This term was used in the works of not only such non-Church figures as Pausanias and Plutarch but also by classical authors, including Livy in his history of Rome, Virgil in the Aeneid (both works date back to the first century BCE), and Homer in the Odyssey, written in the late eighth or early seventh century BCE,” he writes in his study of sleep.
Islam also places special emphasis on staying awake at midnight for the purpose of worship. In Arabic, there is even a special term for the prayer vigil at night – tahajjud. There is even a special prayer with this name, performed at night after sleep.
The Prophet Muhammad said, “Try to wake up and rise for prayer at night, for this is what the best righteous people who lived before you did. This will bring you closer to Allah ﷻ, wash away your sins, and free you from illnesses.” (Narrated by At-Tirmidhi).
Another hadith says, “The most valuable prayer after the obligatory ones is the prayer performed at night, after sleep.” (Narrated by Muslim).
It is known that the founder of the Shafi’i theological and legal school in Islam, Imam ash-Shafi’i, divided the night into three periods: one period for worshiping Allah ﷻ, the second for studying science, and the third for sleep.
In conclusion of the conversation about sleep and how people treated it in different historical eras, we will cite another observation by historian Roger Ekirch.
According to him, references to sleep divided into parts are most obvious in materials written or dictated by representatives of all strata of society except the richest. They are rare among the vast tide of personal documents left by members of the upper classes, especially from the late 17th century onwards, when both artificial lighting and the fashion for ‘late hours’ were steadily spreading among wealthy families.
For example, the Irish writer Richard Steele noted with displeasure in 1710: “Who will not be surprised at this perverted passion of those who are supposed to be the most refined part of mankind, who prefer coals and candles to the sun, and exchange such bright morning hours for the pleasures of midnight revels and drinking?”
Today, the habit of going to bed late and rising late has long ceased to be some special feature of rich people. Many of us can afford such a regime, which would have greatly surprised the ordinary people of the past, for whom the saying “The early bird catches the worm” was not just beautiful words, but the natural rhythm of their lives. They say that many animals and insects do not sleep in one continuous block, but in parts, for several hours at a time or in two separate segments.
And Roger Ekirch believes that people, given the opportunity to sleep naturally, will also not sleep in a single block. Perhaps he is right.
