Mare (folklore)

File:Henry Fuseli (1741–1825), The Nightmare, 1781.jpg

The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli, 1781

A mare (Template:Langx, Template:Langx; Old Norse, Old High German and Swedish: ; Template:Proto) is a malicious entity in Germanic and Slavic folklore that walks on people's chests while they sleep, bringing on nightmares.

Etymology

The word mare comes (through Middle English ) from the Old English feminine noun (which had numerous variant forms, including , , and ). Likewise are the forms in Old Norse/Icelandic as well as the Old High German Template:Refn (glossed in Latin as ""), while the Middle High German forms are .Template:Refn

These in turn come from Proto-Germanic . from which are derived the modern forms: Template:Langx; Template:Langx; Template:Langx; Template:Langx; Template:Langx / , Dutch: (), and German: (). The -mar in French ('nightmare') is borrowed from the Germanic through Old French .

Most scholars trace the word back to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root , associated with crushing, pressing and oppressing.Template:Sfnp or according to other sources 'to rub away' or 'to harm'. However, other etymologies have been suggested. For example, Éva Pócs saw the term as being cognate with the Greek term Moros ( (Indo-European )), meaning 'doom'. There is no definite answer among historians about the time of origin of the word. According to the philologist Yeleazar Meletinsky, the Proto-Slavonic root passed into the Germanic language no later than the 1st century BC.

In Norwegian and Danish, the words for 'nightmare' are and respectively, which can be directly translated as 'mare-ride'. The Icelandic word has the same meaning ( from the verb , 'trample', 'stamp on', related to tread), whereas the Swedish translates as 'mare-dream'.

Beliefs

The mare was believed to ride horses, which left them exhausted and covered in sweat by the morning. She could also entangle the hair of the sleeping man or beast,Template:Refn resulting in "marelocks", called ('mare-braids') or ('mare-tangles') in Swedish or and in Norwegian. The belief probably originated as an explanation to the Polish plait phenomenon, a hair disease.

Even trees were thought to be ridden by the mare, resulting in branches being entangled.Template:Refn The undersized, twisted pine-trees growing on coastal rocks and on wet grounds are known in Sweden as ('mare-pines') or in German as ('nightmare pine').

According to Paul Devereux, mares included witches who took on the form of animals when their spirits went out and about while they were in trance (see the Icelandic example of Geirrid, below). These included animals such as frogs, cats, horses, hares, dogs, oxen, birds and often bees and wasps.

By region

Scandinavia

File:Maran.png

Mare ”riding” a sleeping person

The Scandinavian mare is normally a female being which "rides" the victims chest, called ”mare riding” (Template:Langx, Template:Langx, Template:Langx), causing severe anxiety and feelings of suffocation. It assaults both people and animals, and often travels in the likeness of an animal, especially a cat.

The mare is attested as early as in the Norse Ynglinga saga from the 13th century. Here, King Vanlandi Sveigðisson of Uppsala lost his life to a nightmare () conjured by the Finnish sorceress Huld or Hulda, hired by the king's abandoned wife Drífa. The king had broken his promise to return within three years, and after ten years had elapsed the wife engaged the sorceress to either lure the king back to her, or failing that, to assassinate him. Vanlandi had scarcely gone to sleep when he complained that the nightmare "rode him"; when the men held the king's head it "trod on his legs" on the point of breaking, and when the retinue then "seized his feet", the creature fatally "pressed down on his head". In Sámi mythology, there is an evil elf called Deattán, who transforms into a bird or other animal and sits on the chests of sleeping people, giving nightmares.

According to the Vatnsdæla saga, Thorkel Silver () has a dream about riding a red horse that barely touched ground, which he interpreted as a positive omen, but his wife disagreed, explaining that a mare signified a man's fetch (fylgja), and that the red color boded bloodiness. This association of the nightmare with fetch is thought to be of late origin, an interpolation in the text dating to circa 1300, with the text exhibiting a "confounding of the words and ."

Another possible example is the account in the Eyrbyggja saga of the sorceress Geirrid accused of assuming the shape of a "night-rider" or "ride-by-night" ( or ) and causing serious trampling bruises on Gunnlaug Thorbjornsson. The mentioned here has been equated to the by commentators.

Germany

In Germany, they were known as , (masculine noun, i.e. ""der Mahr"), or . It is called in Low German (or or )) in Pomerania and Rügen, and when it rides a sleeper it can hardly breathe, or it lies over his chest, making its victim drenched with sweat, whereby the victim is able to groan but otherwise rendered speechless and spellbound, and unable to waken unless he is called by his baptismal name. While the is usually a girl with a bad foot according to one source (a certain daughter of a smith in the village of Bork near Stargard having that reputation), there are tales of the môr either male or female (see below).

The môr enters a house through a hole the carpenter forgot to plug, and can be captured by plugging the hole. A male môr who had been tormenting a woman was caught by this method in one tale; he became her husband, fathering her children, but left after being told about the hole, returning just once a year. In another tale, a female môr was caught by the method of applying green paint on the hands, and the captor set her permanently on an oak which withered but always shivered. The môr also rides a horse and makes its mane matted and impossible to untangleTemplate:Refn (folklore collected from Rügen).

It is also said that to prevent a Mahrt from returning, a man who sees it after being visited should offer it a cold bowl and buttered bread for breakfast in the morning, after which she will cease to visit. Another way is boil water in a newly bought jar plugged with a new cork, at which the Mahrt will request the cork to be removed and will not come back again. (folklore of Quazow, Template:Interlanguage link, now Kwasowo, Gmina Sławno, Poland). More generally in Pomerania, an upside down pair of slippers left by the bed will ward it off.

German Folklorist Adalbert Kuhn records a Westphalian charm or prayer used to ward off mares, from Wilhelmsburg near Paderborn:

Such charms are preceded by the example of the Münchener Nachtsegen of the fourteenth century (See Elf under §Medieval and early modern German texts). Its texts demonstrates that certainly by the Late Middle Ages, the distinction between the , the Alp, and the (Drude) was being blurred, the Mare being described as the Alp's mother.

Slavic

Poland

File:Zmora dusząca człowieka.jpg

Mare from Polish folklore – graphics by Kasia Walentynowicz

The Polish nightmare is known by such names as (around Podlachia), (around Kraków). An etymological connection with Marzanna, the name of a demon/goddess of winter has been conjectured.

Template:Citation needed span If a woman was promised to marry a man, but then he married another, the rejected one could also become a mare at night. A very common belief was that if the sponsor (godparent) mispronounced a prayer – e.g. instead of (an inverted version of Ave Maria) at baptism, the child would become a zmora.Template:Refn

The zmora could be recognized by the joined unibrow (), according to the lore of the Wielkopolska (Greater Poland), including Template:Interlanguage link (Poznań County) where a zmora of either sex is recognizable by huge black eyebrows joined in the middle above the nose.Template:RefnTemplate:Refn Black unibrow is ascribed to zmora or the (likened to a , Template:Linktext 'witch'). Other signs of someone being a mare could be: having multicoloured eyes or a unibrow (exclusive to the Kalisz region, Poland).

The zmora by the power of the devil can shapeshift into various forms: straw, grass, a mouse, a dog, a cat, a mare, a cow, (also white shadow, leather bag, snake) or anything to disturb a person's sleep.Template:Rp The zmora is also called a strzyga (‘witch’, cog. strigoi), and is hard to distinguish from a normal human woman, except she prowls at night doing things she will not remember afterwards.Template:Rp The zmora differs from strzyga according to another account, which asserts that when the zmora dies, it dies for good, while the strzyga becomes a revenant and exhibits transformational abilities only after becoming an undead.Template:Rp

In a family with seven daughters and no sons. the eldest or youngest was bound to become a zmora, so it has been told.Template:RpTemplate:Refn Or if a pregnant woman passes through in-between two other pregnant woman, the daughter born becomes a zmora.Template:Sfnp

It is said that the zmora, once it turns to day, becomes completely unaware of her own strangling or blood-sucking activities during the night.Template:Rp Some say she sticks in her tongue while mounting the victim on his chest, and sucks the blood from his tongue, leaving him emaciated.

It can transform into a moth or mosquito and invade a house through cracks in the window. It is also said that the zmora must exit by the same hole it entered, and this characteristic can be exploited to capture it, as told in one tale where a jilted whore who was a zmora sneaks into the home and blood-sucks her chosen man and his wife. She was bound with a belt of St. Francis, which he converted to a halter, and she turned into a female horse and ridden by him for 7 years to her death.Template:Rp In a variant (also from Krakow County penned by the same woman), a farmhand marries the zmore but tests how she may suffer after plugging her conduit, only uplugging it after she is pregnant.Template:RpTemplate:Efn Another variant (from Lublin County) tells of a farmhand who catches the zmora in cat-for using St. Francis's belt; it turns out to be a girl in love with him.

People believed that the mare drained people – as well as cattle and horses –of energy and/or blood at night. And not only is she a bloodsucker of men,Template:Rp but even a sapsucker of trees, according to Krakovian lore.Template:RpTemplate:Refn The ways purportedly effective for warding the stable (and perhaps home tooTemplate:Refn) are hanging a slaughtered magpie (Template:Linktext), inviting the mare for breakfast,Template:Refn cutting off a string from the doorknob, sticking an awl in the door, or putting a broom and an axe crosswise on the threshold (or a broom in the bedroom to ward it off). To protect livestock, some people hung mirrors over the manger (to scare the mare with its own face) or sometimes the horses were given red ribbons, or covered in a stinking substance.

Other protection practices include:

• drinking coffee before sleeping,
• taking the mare's hat,
• throwing a piece of a noose at the demon,
• sleeping with a leather, wedding belt or a scythe,
• changing one's sleeping position,
• smearing feces on the front door,
• leaving a bundle of hay in one's bed and going to sleep in another room.

Other

Polish and Czech denotes both a kind of elf (alp, nightmare) as well as a moth.Template:Refn Other Slavic languages with cognates that have the double meaning of moth are: Kashubian ,Template:Sfnp and Slovak .

The Polish term attested in the 15th century means an illness condition of a child, who suffers from spasmodic crying, for which demons were sometimes blamed.Template:Refn This is precursor to the related term referring to the adult condition of "nightmare oppression" (German: ); note that nocnica could also mean "night moth". Another Polish synonym was Template:Linktext.

In Croatian, refers to a 'nightmare'. Mora or Mara is one of the spirits from ancient Slav mythology, a dark one who becomes a beautiful woman to visit men in their dreams, torturing them with desire before killing them. In Serbia, a mare is called or , or ('night creature', masculine and feminine respectively). In Romania they were known as Moroi.

The Russian counterpart is called kikimora or hihimore, like the French name cauchemar.

Some believe that a enters the room through the keyhole, sits on the chest of the sleeper and tries to strangle them (hence , 'to torture', 'to bother', 'to strangle', , 'to tire', 'to kill', , 'tiredness' and , 'tired'). To repel s, children are advised to look at the window or to turn the pillow and make the sign of the cross on it (); in the early 19th century, Vuk Karadžić mentions that people would repel s by leaving a broom upside down behind their doors, or putting their belt on top of their sheets, or saying an elaborate prayer poem before they go to sleep.

See also

• Alp (folklore)
• Basty
• Batibat
• Enchanted Moura
• Ghosts in Thai culture
• Incubus
• Lietuvēns
• Madam Koi Koi
• Mara (demon)
• Mara (Hindu goddess)
• Marzanna (Slavic goddess of death and winter)
• Maya (illusion)
• Moroi
• Moros
• Mouros
• Night hag
• Nightmare
• Pesanta
• Sleep paralysis, medical term for the condition the mare is thought to originate from.
• Slavic fairies
• Succubus

Fiction:

• Paranormal Entity, a 2009 found-footage film featuring a mare named Maron as the antagonist
• Marianne, a 2011 Swedish horror film featuring mares
• Borgman, a 2013 Dutch thriller film featuring mares
• Outlast, a 2013 video game featuring Mares/Alps
• Hilda, a 2018 TV series. Episode 6 "The Nightmare Spirit" focuses on one
• Mara, a 2018 American horror film
• Phasmophobia, a 2020 video game featuring Mares

References

Bibliography

• Bjorvand, Harald; Lindeman, Fredrik Otto edd. (2007). Våre arveord. 2nd edition. Novus. Template:ISBN.
• Devereux, Paul (2001). Haunted Land: Investigations into Ancient Mysteries and Modern Day Phenomena, Piatkus Publishers.
• Hødnebø, Finn and Magerøy, Hallvard (eds.) (1979). Snorres kongesagaer 1, 2nd ed. Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. Template:ISBN.
• Pickett, Joseph P. et al. (eds.) (2000). The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Template:ISBN.