Research case · People & kin
An orchestra of birdsong
England · before 1911
I dreamed that I was listening to a performance of Haydn’s Creation, the orchestral part of the performance seeming to consist chiefly of the very realistic representation of the song of birds
Open this dream in the galaxy →
- Source
- The World of Dreams — Havelock Ellis, 1911. Case report
- Rights
- Public domain (US)
- Record type
- Research case
- Place
- England · British
- Date
- before 1911
- Uncertainty
- Moderate — Reported in Havelock Ellis’s study of dreams.
- Imagery
- Music · Bird · Crowd
- Feelings
- Wonder · Calm
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Family members, friends and strangers populate most dreams. Freud read many such dreams as wishes in disguise; contemporary researchers emphasise continuity with waking relationships and concerns.
Freud, Dream Psychology (1920)
Mythological
Dreams in epic and scripture are often addressed to someone — a wife waiting for a husband, a son receiving a vision for his family — and are told aloud to be understood.
Odyssey XIX; Genesis 37
Chinese traditions
Confucius lamented that he no longer dreamed of the Duke of Zhou; in Chinese letters, dreaming of someone is a measure of how much they are on one’s mind.
Analects 7.5
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- An opera I had never heard Baltimore, USA · before 1911
- Cultivate and make music Athens, Greece · 399 BCE
- Four people in black asked to live Runan, China · 4th century (Jin)
- A procession coming down the hill Yamato Province, Japan · 1904 (retold folk tale)
- A cannon before the Arch of Constantine Rome (dreamed) · before 1912
- A living globe made of drops Russia · 1869 (novel)