"second" or "morning" sleep. A character in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales sleeps "hire fyrste sleep & thanne a-wok." A 16th century French physician concludes that the working class produces more offspring due to their practice of waiting until after their "premier sommeil" to conceive. In Homer's Odyssey, book four, Proteus's daughter Eidothea tells Menelaus to seize her father "in his first sleep." And in Latin texts, there are multiple references to primo somno or concubine nocte. Ekrich published his findings in a 2009 book entitled At Day's Close: Night in Times Past.

First or "deep" or "dead" sleep, as it was sometimes called, often seems to have taken place shortly after sunset, or at least before 10 in the evening. After two to four hours of the night's deepest rest,which strongly suggests that its devotees include a prayer, called the Tahajjud, between sleep in the final third of the night. Some Christian churches hold regular midnight masses and historically members of oppressed religions found the so-called witching hour the perfect time to gather and pray. Monks of all traditions have considered the time of absolute stillness as ideal for meditation.

Dream analysis, love-making and creative ruminations were also favourite activities during "the watch," another name given to midnight wakings. Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, was in the habit of taking up books on moral philosophy before bed with the intention of waking after his first sleep to 'ruminate' over them. A century earlier, poet Francis Quarles (1592-1644) praised the hour between sleeps, saying, "Let