Johannes Fungerus, in his “Etymologicon Latino-Graecum,” published at Leyden in 1607, in art.  Somnus, gravely relates the story, with a young Dutchman for the hero and as having happened “within the memory of our fathers, both as it has been handed down in truthful and honourable fashion as well as frequently told to me."[FN#378] His “true story” may thus be rendered: 

A certain young man of Dort, in Holland, had squandered his wealth and all his estate and having contracted a debt, was unable to pay it.  A certain one appeared to him in a dream, and advised him to betake himself to Kempen, and there on the bridge he would receive information from some one as to the way in which he should be extricated from his difficulties.  He went there, and when he was in a sorrowful mood and thinking upon what had been told him and promenaded almost the whole day, a common beggar, who was asking alms, pitying his condition, sat down and asked him, “Why so sad?” Thereupon the dreamer explained to him his sad and mournful fate, and why he had come there forsooth, under the impulse of a dream, he had set out thither, and was expecting God as if by a wonder, to unravel this more than Gordian knot.  The mendicant answered “Good Heaven! are you so mad and foolish as to rely on a dream, which is emptier than nothing, and journey hither?  I should betake myself to Dort, to dig up a treasure buried under such a tree in such a man’s garden (now this garden had belonged to the dreamer’s father), likewise revealed to me in a dream.”  The other remained silent and pondering all that had been said to him, then hastened with all speed to Dort, and under the aforesaid tree found a great heap of money, which freed him from his obligations, and having paid off all his debts, he set up in a more sumptuous style than before.

The second part of the tale, or novelette, of “The Spectre Barber,” by Musaeus (1735-1788), is probably an elaboration of some German popular legend closely resembling the last-cited version, only in this instance the hero does not dream, but is told by a ghost, in reward for a service he had done it (or him), to tarry on the great bridge over the Weser, at the time when day and night are equal, for a friend who would instruct him what he must do to retrieve his fortune.  He goes there at dawn, and walks on the bridge till evening comes, when there remained no one but himself and a wooden legged soldier to whom he had given a small coin in the early morning, and who ventured at length to ask him why he had promenaded the bridge all day.  The youth at first said he was waiting for a friend, but on the old soldier remarking that he could be no friend who would keep him waiting so long, he said that he had only dreamt he was to meet some friend (for he did not care to say anything about his interview with the ghost), the old fellow observed that he had had many dreams, but put not the least faith in them.  “But my dream,” quoth the youth, “was a most remarkable one.”  “It couldn’t have been so remarkable as one I had many years ago,” and so on, as usual, with this addition, that the young man placed the old soldier in a snug little cottage and gave him a comfortable annuity for life—­taking care, we may be sure, not to tell him a word as to the result of acting upon his dream.