Posted in Interesting Blog Tid-Bits

I have noticed that lots of hits on my blog result from a search for the meaning of the old saying:

Good night,

Sleep tight,

Don't let

The bedbugs bite.

And if they do,

Take a shoe,

And beat them till

They're black and blue.

Just finding that last line was a challenge!  Thanks to a fellow blogger who filled me in on the lines that escaped my childhood memories. 

As for the history, you need to go back a bit in history to the days before box-springs and mattresses.  Bedframes were made to hold ticks, the equivalent of our modern-day mattress, which were filled, depending on the season of the year, with either straw (summer) or down (winter).  The mattress was supported by a series of ropes that criss-crossed from one side of the bedframe to the other.  These ropes would loosen with time, and needed to be tightened in order to have a comfortable night's rest.  There was actually a tool to do this, a wooden bed key.  So "sleep tight" referred to having a comfortable sleep on firmly tightened bed ropes. 

Bedbugs were a real problem at that time, as well.  These bugs are small (about 8 mm long), nocturnal creatures and they only come out at night.  Their reason for coming out?  To suck your blood----YUCK!  These little rascals feed exclusively on blood!  Often times, besides being painful and itchy, the person who is bit will have an allergic reaction to the bite.  With a severe infestation, the person sleeping in the bed will lose considerable sleep, and could even suffer from iron and hemoglobin deficiencies due to the lose of blood. Infestations can literally last forever, as it takes potent pesticides to erradicate these little nuisances, and they can live for over a year without eating!  So you could leave home for a year, and they would still be there in your bed waiting for their next meal. 

As you can see, this old saying was a way of telling your guests, your children, or whomever, to have a comfortable night's rest, and that you hope that they don't find any pesty bedbugs visiting them in the wee hours of the night. 

If anyone visits my blog to find out the meaning behind this old saying, please leave a comment so that I know you finally found out either the whole little rhyme, or the meaning behind it :-)  Now that you finally know, I hope that you "sleep tight."