A mare ( ang, mære, odt, mare, ; in

Old High German Old High German (OHG; german: Althochdeutsch (Ahd.)) is the earliest stage of the German language, conventionally covering the period from around 750 to 1050. There is no standardised or supra-regional form of German at this period, and Old High ...

Old Norse Old Norse, Old Nordic, or Old Scandinavian, is a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and t ...

, and

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

) is a malicious entity in Germanic and Slavic folklore that rides on people's chests while they sleep, bringing on nightmares.Bjorvand and Lindeman (2007), pp. 719–720.

Etymology

The word ''mare'' comes (through

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...

) from the Old English feminine noun (which had numerous variant forms, including , , and ). These in turn come from

Proto-Germanic Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic bran ...

. is the source of non, mara, from which are derived sv, mara; is, mara; fo, marra; da, mare; no, mare''/'', Dutch: (), and German: ()'. The ''-mar'' in

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

('nightmare') is borrowed from the Germanic through

Old French Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligi ...

. Most scholars trace the word back to the reconstructed

Proto-Indo-European root The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) are basic parts of words that carry a lexical meaning, so-called morphemes. PIE roots usually have verbal meaning like "to eat" or "to run". Roots never occurred alone in the la ...

, associated with crushing, pressing and oppressing. 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 Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

(Indo-European ), meaning 'doom'.Devereux (2001), ''Haunted Land'', p.78 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, resulting in "marelocks", called ('mare-braids') or ('mare-tangles') in

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. 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

The mare is attested as early as in the Norse '' Ynglinga saga'' from the 13th century. Here, King Vanlandi Sveigðisson of

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inha ...

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 , , or . German Folklorist Franz Felix Adalbert Kuhn records a

Westphalia Westphalia (; german: Westfalen ; nds, Westfalen ) is a region of northwestern Germany and one of the three historic parts of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It has an area of and 7.9 million inhabitants. The territory of the regi ...

n charm or prayer used to ward off mares, from Wilhelmsburg near

Paderborn Paderborn (; Westphalian: ''Patterbuorn'', also ''Paterboärn'') is a city in eastern North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, capital of the Paderborn district. The name of the city derives from the river Pader and ''Born'', an old German term for th ...

: 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 Late Middle Ages or Late Medieval Period was the period of European history lasting from AD 1300 to 1500. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Europe, the Ren ...

, the distinction between the , the Alp, and the ( Drude) was being blurred, the Mare being described as the Alp's mother.

Slavic

Poland

Etymologically, Polish is connected to ''Mara/

Marzanna Marzanna (in Polish), Morė (in Lithuanian), Marena (in Russian), Mara (in Ukrainian), Morana (in Czech, Slovene and Serbo-Croatian), Morena (in Slovak and Macedonian) or Mora (in Bulgarian) is a pagan Slavic goddess associated with seasonal r ...

'', a demon/goddess of winter. It could be a soul of a person (alive or dead) such as a sinful woman, someone wronged or someone who died without confession. Other signs of someone being a mare could be: being the seventh daughter, having one's name pronounced in a wrong way while being baptised, having multicoloured eyes or a unibrow (exclusive to the Kalisz region, Poland). 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 one would become a mare if they mispronounced a prayer – e.g. instead of (an inverted version of '' Hail Mary''). The mare can turn into animals and objects, such as cats, frogs, yarn, straw or apples. People believed that the mare drained people – as well as cattle and horses – of energy and/or blood at night. Protection practices included: * 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, * inviting the mare for breakfast, * 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. To protect livestock, some people hung mirrors over the manger (to scare the mare with its own face) or affixed dead birds of prey to the stable doors. Sometimes the horses were given red ribbons, or covered in a stinking substance.

Other

A Czech denotes a kind of elf or spirit as well as a sphinx moth or "night butterfly". Other

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto ...

with cognates that have the double meaning of

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of ...

are:

Kashubian Kashubian can refer to: * Pertaining to Kashubia, a region of north-central Poland * Kashubians, an ethnic group of north-central Poland * Kashubian language See also *Kashubian alphabet The Kashubian or Cassubian alphabet (''kaszëbsczi alf ...

, and Slovak . In the northwest and south Russian traditions, the mara is a female character, similar to

kikimora Kikimora ( rus, кикимора, p=kʲɪˈkʲimərə) is a legendary creature, a female house spirit in Slavic mythology. Her role in the house is usually juxtaposed with that of the domovoy. The kikimora can either be a "bad" or a "good" spirit, ...

. Usually invisible, it can take the form of a black woman with long shaggy hair, which she combs, sitting on a yarn. In

Croatian Croatian may refer to: * Croatia *Croatian language *Croatian people *Croatians (demonym) See also * * * Croatan (disambiguation) * Croatia (disambiguation) * Croatoan (disambiguation) * Hrvatski (disambiguation) * Hrvatsko (disambiguation) * S ...

, 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 ('night creature', masculine and feminine respectively). In Romania they were known as '' Moroi''. 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.

Notes

General references

* Bjordvand, Harald and Lindeman, Fredrik Otto (2007). ''Våre arveord''. Novus. . * 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. . * * Pickett, Joseph P. et al. (eds.) (2000).
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
', 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. . *