A cottager's dwelling, small, with a glowing kitchener [stove]: before it a dear and beautiful baby boy playing alone. Struck with the child's beauty, its angelic limbs and pink skin, I yearned for it that it should be clean. The mother appeared in the doorway at that moment; she was an untidy, unmethodical being who irritated me.

Tactfully, as I thought, I suggested that it would give me great joy to bathe her beautiful babe. Not quite knowing how the offer was meant, however, she went reluctantly to fetch the bath and water. I then sent her off to fetch clean clothes, saying a clean baby must have only clean clothes. She went out to fetch them. I had bathed the boy and was revelling in his merry mood as he lay kicking and cooing on my lap. The mother did not return, but I was happy with this perfect child, admiring him, dangling his wee legs while he cooed sweetly at me all the time.

At last she returned, and I held the babe up to show her how beautifully clean he was, kissing and fondling him the while. She said she could find no clean clothes, so I told her to hold the baby while I looked for some.

On my return she laughed queerly and said the baby 'was very nice now.' I asked her 'where is he?' and she opened the oven door, telling me to 'look! look!' She had roasted my beautiful baby. We fought like wild animals, but she got me fixed, screaming, 'It was my baby!'

She had almost choked me, when I awoke to find I had pressed the corner of the pillow so into my throat during the battle that it ached quite badly, and I suppose this woke me.

EDITOR'S NOTE

Legge gets these nightmares when run down or sick, so I'd guess the "untidy" woman she dislikes is her run-ragged overworked self, trying to keep the body (baby) clean and well... but failing. Roasting the baby is the fever of illness--and, not incidentally, such fevers probably force the oblivious Legge to quit overworking, at least a while.

Legge plainly sees her alter ego resents her, and gets violent to shock her, but seems blind to the reason: Legge treats the body/baby as a doll or toy, wanting to play but ignoring the maintenance work a body requires. It's a topdog-underdog nightmare, with the dreamer as topdog, denying the other party even has a case. No, the resentful part is just "diabolical".

No wonder such dreams were, for her, recurrent.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: The Dream World by Rodolphe L. Megroz, 1939, p124-5.

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