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~Famous~
 Paul McCartney Finds "Yesterday"
In a Dream Paul McCartney is one of the most famous singer/ songwriters of all time. According to the Guinness Book of Records, his Beatles song "Yesterday" (1965) has the most cover versions of any song ever written and, according to record label BMI, was performed over seven million times in the 20th century. The Beatles were in London in 1965 filming Help! and McCartney was staying in a small attic room of his family's house on Wimpole Street.
One morning, in a dream he heard a classical string ensemble playing, and, as McCartney tells it: "I woke up with a lovely tune in my head. I thought, 'That's great, I wonder what that is?' There was an upright piano next to me, to the right of the bed by the window. I got out of bed, sat at the piano, found G, found F sharp minor 7th -- and that leads you through then to B to E minor, and finally back to E. It all leads forward logically. I liked the melody a lot, but because I'd dreamed it, I couldn't believe I'd written it. I thought, 'No, I've never written anything like this before.' But I had the tune, which was the most magic thing!"
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Inspired By a Dream In the summer of 1816, nineteen-year-old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her lover, the poet Percy Shelley (whom she married later that year), visited the poet Lord Byron at his villa beside Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Stormy weather frequently forced them indoors, where they and Byron's other guests sometimes read from a volume of ghost stories. One evening, Byron challenged his guests to each write one themselves. Mary's story, inspired by a dream, became Frankenstein. "When I placed my head upon my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think... I saw -- with shut eyes, but acute mental vision -- I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together.
I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavor to mock the stupendous Creator of the world. ...I opened mine in terror. The idea so possessed my mind, that a thrill of fear ran through me, and I wished to exchange the ghastly image of my fancy for the realities around. ...I could not so easily get rid of my hideous phantom; still it haunted me. I must try to think of something else. I recurred to my ghost story -- my tiresome, unlucky ghost story! O! if I could only contrive one which would frighten my reader as I myself had been frightened that night! Swift as light and as cheering was the idea that broke upon me. 'I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted me my midnight pillow.' On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story. I began that day with the words, 'It was on a dreary night of November', making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream."
St. Patrick Follows His Dreams Surprisingly little is known about the life of St. Patrick, one of the most well-known saints in Christianity. The common belief that he drove snakes out of Ireland is now believed to be false. Some believe that the "snakes" in the story may be a metaphor for Pagans and Heathens. Patrick incorporated traditional Pagan rituals and symbols into his efforts to convert the Irish, who had traditionally practiced earth-based spirituality, to Christianity. For example, Patrick used bonfires at Easter services because the people honored their gods with fire.
It is known that he was born into a wealthy, but not particularly religious family. When Patrick was sixteen years old, he was taken prisoner by a group of Irish renegades who brought him to Ireland, where he was held in captivity for six years. He was put to work as a shepherd and became a devout Christian in his isolation, dreaming of converting the Irish people to Christianity. He finally escaped and according to his writing, God spoke to him in a dream. Patrick interpreted the dream as a sign that he was to leave Ireland. After walking nearly 200 miles, Patrick had another dream. This time an angel told him to return to Ireland as a missionary. Patrick followed his dream and was ordained as a priest after fifteen years of study. By this time, part of Ireland's population practiced Christianity, so the legend that St. Patrick introduced the religion is not completely accurate. Irish culture is a dreaming culture, centered around storytelling, poetry and myth. Many of the stories about him were exaggerated in the Irish tradition of weaving wonderful tales to record their heritage.
"I can but give an instance or so of what part is done sleeping and what part awake…and to do this I will first take…Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I had long been trying to write a story on this subject. For two days I went about wracking my brains for a plot of any sort, and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the window and a scene afterward split in two, in which Hyde, pursued for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers. All the rest was made awake, and consciously. Robert Louis Stevenson, A Chapter on Dreams, 1892.
"About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. It was light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed.
What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, some gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. "Who is dead in the White House?" I demanded of one of the soldiers "The President" was his answer; "he was killed by an assassin! Then came a loud burst of grief form the crowd, which awoke me from my dream. " Ward Hill Lamon, Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1885, 1911.
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