Tales of the Night

Other times and other tales

Polyphasic and the Night’s Three Watches

In olden times, as I have heard tell (before man’s light slew the darkness), men drowsed and slept soon after nightfall, only to wake in the middle hours of the night, to wake a while by the fire (and perhaps to stoke the fire and throw more logs on), then slept again until the first light heralded the coming of the dawn. This meant, for those men of old, who lived through almost all of the 200,000 years or so since modern man has walked the Earth, that sleep was polyphasic, that is to say, men slept more than one session in the 24-hour turning of the day. (Also we might say based upon traditional cultures, that men slept some in the heavy, hot middle of the daylight, after the mid-day meal. But this could only be true of man in the last 12,000 years or so, for those folk who have mastered agriculture, lived mostly on grain, and had plenty to eat — ‘plenty’ meaning that starvation was held in check as the nightmare of famine years that came but rarely.)

Thus, in these times, the night held three watches:

1. the hour or two from twilight on,
2. the hour or two in the mid-part of the night,
3. and the last hour of night before the dawn.

This gave the men of those times past (and, maybe, times to come) three watches in which they could tell their tales.

Time and Tales

When a man finds himself in different moods, different kinds of tales appeal to his fancy, both to tell and to hear. The tales of Day are not the tales of Night, and neither are the tales of the Morning the tales of Day’s End. Here we have to do with the tales of the three watches of the Night, and how they might differ, and how talesmen might profit by the use of this knowledge.

This is of most interest to talesmen as they frame what tale to tell, and when to tell it, and most of all when they compose a tale for a later telling. For us in the audience, we know at the time what kind of tale our mood prefers, and we will let a talesman know when the tale he is telling bores us or doesn’t suit our mood.

The First Watch

In the first watch of the night, Day is slipping through our fingers. With it go the concerns of the Day. The Dark meanwhile is rising, and with that come on the thoughts of Dark’s realms. Thus, this watch straddles the two realms of Day and Dark. We feel yet some weariness of the day’s toil, and wish for a better life. This is the watch for light tales of humor, and pleasant wishing-fantasies.

The Second Watch

In the second watch of the night, when we waken from first sleep, we find ourselves in another world. We woke in darkness, and we will fall asleep once more in darkness. The Day seems far away. The firelight casts shadows, and all light is flickering. Stars fill the sky, and many nights the Moon will have already set, or will not yet have risen. This is the watch for high Fantasy, of the greatest of feats deep beyond the farthest marches of Eartherea.

The Third Watch

In the third watch of the night, when we waken from second sleep, and know we will sleep no more, we can see the first blush of the coming Dawn. We woke in darkness, but the Light is coming back to us, and our hopes and thoughts reach out for the Day we face. Once more we straddle the dark and the light, but now with greater energy than we felt at Day’s end, and with our mind believing that today will, somehow, be different and better than yesterday and all the days that went before.

Now, the tales for the third watch come, as I imagine, in two forms. Some will deal with practical matters — they will partake almost wholly of the Day itself — and so Realism might drown out Fantasy. But the more our minds turn to practical matters, the less we feel like spinning tales. At the same time, the second sleep of the night has been heavy with dreams. The first sleep was mostly deep and dreamless, refreshing brain and body. We woke from it somewhat groggy, and do not, in the whole of the second watch of the night, come fully into our waking state. But the second sleep is mostly dreams, dreams and nightmares, and when we wake for the third watch of the night, that will blend into the waking day, we will wish to linger in that realm of dreams. So here we have, when we sink and lapse once more into thoughts those dreams evoke, the best time for tales of desire of darkest and weirdest kind. Tales of violence and vengeance; tales of strange unfathomable twists and turns; tales of sex and desire.

Spinning and Spanning the Watches

It may also come, when the fire of illusion burns so bright and hot in us that sleep yields, and drifts far off, that the second watch of the night eats up the second sleep, and then it is best to ride it out for so long as we can. But there is danger here, lest we end the night spent to see the dawn, unwilling to face the day, and longing to sleep out the best hours of the morning.

Few of us can manage such a feat. The young, perhaps, and lovers, for love burns and yet draws forth hidden secret reserves of strength, and banishes weariness in its fever. For the rest of us, it seems that only those men who can lie abed days (and only those cultures and classes wealthy enough to afford to keep such men in bread and shelter) can spin tales through the second and third watches of the night, and do without their second sleep. For them, their tales must take the place of dreaming, and will partake of both the high Fantasy of the second watch, and the weird, dark, and desirous aspects of the third watch and its tales.

(Composed on keyboard Monday, May 26, 2008)