This was one of dozens of daily sketches I did in a small book for my daughter's Christmas present a couple of years ago. Love the wacky gulls. So many in my area.
Superstitions: Nightmare
The 'nightmare' was originally believed to be a huge spirit which settled on people while they slept and gave them a feeling of being stifled - and in Europe an old preventative for this was to place a knife or something similar at the end of the bed, as it was well known that the denizens of darkness feared iron and steel.
