FIRST SLEEP AND SECOND SLEEP. Annalisa has marveled that I have been posting about my hobby horses, the subjects I repeat myself on, and yet I have not yet said anything about first sleep and second sleep. I read an article some time ago, which discussed research by A. Roger Ekirch into sleep in preindustrial times. Ekirch described how sleep then was generally divided into two parts of roughly equal length with perhaps an hour between them: “first sleep” and “second sleep”. People might get up, go outside and chat with neighbors during this period. I was very taken with this concept and, as Annalisa notes, refer to it frequently. Once I had a name for it, I felt quite comfortable getting up after first sleep and perhaps writing down notes — say, for a blog posting. Wikipedia calls it segmented sleep and says that people in pre-industrial times would use the interval between first and second sleep to visit, and writers would use it to write. My “walking around” book for the winter was PICKWICK PAPERS, and I noted in chapter 49 a reference to first sleep. I have encountered the phrase a number of times since I was alerted to the concept.
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I like to think I do my best thinking at night. The trouble is I never get any first sleep in beforehand.
So what sort of timetable are we looking at?
Sleep from 10 to 2 am and then from 3-7am? I’m not sure when this intermission would occur
Nick, I think that the coordination of sleep patterns just happened. When you think in terms of timetables, you are post-industrial. And maybe part of me is pre-industrial.
So basically, Dad, it doesn’t matter what times the sleep shifts start and end?
I have my own theory on this one. People probably drank quite a bit of beer with dinner/supper. After they went to bed, soundly soused, they woke up a few hours later with full bladders and a wide awake feeling. Hence, the going outside (to the privy), the visiting, the pipes smoked, etc. till they could settle down to second sleep. If they were smart, they wouldn’t start up the drinking again until after supper the next night.