I spent my early years in Meaux, and often went to a neighbouring village, called Trilport, situated on the Marne, where my father was building a bridge.

A few months ago I found myself transported by a dream to the days of my childhood, and while playing in this village of Trilport, I saw a man dressed in a sort of uniform, to whom I went and asked his name. He told me his name was C..., who was the bridge guard, and then disappeared to make way for other characters.

I woke up with the name C... in my head. Was this pure imagination, or was there a guard in Trilport called C...? I did not know, as I did not remember such a name.

Some time later I asked an old maid who had been in my father's service and who often took me to Trilport, if she remembered an individual called C., she immediately replied that he was a guard on the bridge of the Marne when my father was building a bridge. I had certainly met him, as she had, but the memory had faded.

The dream, by evoking it, had revealed to me what I had forgotten.

NOTE

Maury did not coin the modern term cryptomnesia for dreams accessing detailed memories lost to the conscious, but was the first dream researcher I'm aware of who recognized the phenomenon.

--Chris Wayan

Source: Dreams and how to direct them, 2022, pp 96; Daniel Bernardo's translation of Les rêves et les moyens de les diriger by Hervey de Saint-Denys, 1867. Hervey's source is Alfred Maury's Le Sommeil et les Rêves (Sleep and Dreams), 1861. (But Wikipedia dates the book to 1865; if so, the dream would be from '64 or '65.)

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