A San Diego woman says her mother always tucked her into bed with the comforting wish, “Sweet dreams, and rest in the arms of Morpheus.” This allusion to mythology evokes a time when people were more familiar with Greek myth, and the shape-shifting god Morpheus who ruled over sleep and dreams and inspired both the word metamorphosis and the name of the sleep-inducing drug, morphine. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Rest in the Arms of Morpheus”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Leanne calling from San Diego.
Hi, Leanne. Welcome to the show.
Hello, Leanne.
Thank you.
What can we do for you?
Well, here is my question.
My mom used to put me to sleep at night and tuck me in in the 1950s and would say this expression, have sweet dreams and rest in the arms of Morpheus. And I’m interested in how that came to be a phrase, why someone would be using that and every day sign off for their children and anything else you could tell me about the use of it.
So did it make you feel secure then?
Oh, it was just lovely. Who wouldn’t want to sleep in the arms of someone? And I understood who Morpheus was, but I had no idea where she might have heard that or if anybody else used it. It’s just a question that’s been with me. Sleep in the arms of Morpheus.
And you say you already know that Morpheus was the ancient god of dreams. Ultimately, he became the god of sleep. Of sleep, but in ancient Greece, he was, he was the god of dreams and, and a sort of a shape-shifting character who could get into your dreams and impersonate people. And, and we get the word better. Yeah. Right. Right. Comes from the Greek word morphe, which means form. And we get the words metamorphosis from that. And ultimately we get the word morphine, which induces sleep. Yes. From the name of.
Yes. But how, how would it be that somebody would come, that that would be an expression that people would use?
Yeah, it’s a gorgeous expression and one that’s used less and less. I don’t know about… It would go back to when we were more classically literate. Right. When it was the kind of thing that everyone who went to school would read the myths. Right. And he also had the same name in both mythologies, right? In the Roman and the Greek mythologies. In Ovid’s Metamorphosis.
Yeah. But how did this come to be something that people ever used in modern times, in the 50s, for example. Right. I understand your question, and I’m not sure of any song or any passage in literature that would have suggested that exact phrase. But what you would have is, if you think about the influence that television shows have today, where they’re a common cultural touchstone, and we might call back to a story that we all know, because we’ve all seen the show, and say, oh yeah, that’s just like George Costanza and the fat wallet, right? Or, you know, that’s like waiting in line at the Chinese restaurant with nothing happening, right? At a time when everyone knew these mythologies, if you were educated at all, you knew them, it’d be easy to say, yeah, I was so tired last night. It was like I went to sleep in the arms of Morpheus. And everyone’s like, oh yeah, Morpheus, sleeping, dreaming, being tired.
Yeah, it makes a lot of sense to me. And so even today, these mythological figures have given us a whole bunch of other words. All of them have, more or less, most of them anyway. And even today, you can say thundering like Zeus, and people will still get, oh, yeah, Zeus is the god of thunder. He throws lightning bolts, right?
Yeah.
And so pretty much it’s just a cultural touch point. We all have it in common there. We can refer back to it to make sure that we’re understood.
I love it.
Well, it’s quite possible that other listeners have gone to bed and heard exactly those same words. If you’ve heard that phrase, let us know. Call us at 877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.
Leanne, thank you so much for your call.
Thank you.
All right.
Thank you so much.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
