Historical dream account · English · original text
The purple-brown cloud and the distant drums
Mary Arnold-Forster (1861–1951)
Studies in Dreams (1921) · X. Sense Impressions in Dreams; printed pages 130–131; original 1921 English edition
Dreamer identified by the source: Mary Arnold-Forster
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At a spot in Kensington Gardens which is now dominated by Watts' statue of "Physical Energy," the dream used to begin. The slow ticking of a watch gave warning, but alas ! too late, of what was inevitably approaching. In the eastern sky a cloud would come slowly sailing up till it reached and covered the zenith, a cloud of a shade of purplish brown which for some unknown reason was dreadful to me, and lastly, from somewhere very far away there would come the sound of the roll of drums. I thought life could hold nothing more full of fear than that colour accompanied by that distant sound, and no daylight reasoning gave me reassurance, until by a happy chance I learned how to make my escape from all such haunting dreams.
Source & context
A historical sleep-dream account recorded in Mary Arnold-Forster’s original English Studies in Dreams (1921). Its figures, events and explanations belong to the reported dream, not verified waking events or present-day clinical advice. This is not a modern Synastry community submission.
Mary Arnold-Forster, Studies in Dreams (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1921), pp. 130–131. Original English historical dream account.
A source dateline, where supplied, identifies only the printed month/year. No single exact dream date or real contributor location is inferred. 1921 is this original English edition’s publication year.
Public domain in the United States and United Kingdom — original 1921 English text ↗
Public Domain Mark identifies copyright status; it is not a new license grant. Published in 1921 in the United States; author died in 1951. No all-jurisdiction warranty.
Source locator and text provenance
X. Sense Impressions in Dreams; printed pages 130–131; original 1921 English edition
The original text and redactions are preserved. The page title is an editorial navigation label.
Bounded source account extracted without commentary or page furniture; original narrative preserved. Physical line-end word hyphens joined, whitespace and OCR quotation marks normalized; only individually logged scan-verified lexical repairs. Editorial navigation title added.
Exact inclusive raw-OCR line spans, source-file hashes, exclusions, correction replay and original page scans are retained in the research packet.
- Account text SHA-256
- a313e558cb3b5c4edc1d4a6e9fb2dd7c31cb6e9cf189cbffb44374e775540158
- Source file SHA-256
- 9343d3780e67ab7cdf39c14275bb6708cf64eceb8a315876c6db8525205748f7
Content notes
- Fear
Connections in the Loom
Titles, theme labels, illustrations and map connections are editorial navigation aids. They are separate from the account’s words and do not establish connections between real people.