Marra (folklore)

A mare ( ang, mære, odt, mare, ; in Old High German, Old Norse, and Swedish) 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 ) from the Old English feminine noun (which had numerous variant forms, including , , and ). These in turn come from Proto-Germanic . 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 ('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. 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 (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 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. 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 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 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

Etymologically, Polish is connected to ''Mara/Marzanna'', 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 with cognates that have the double meaning of moth are: Kashubian , and Slovak .

In the northwest and south Russian traditions, the mara is a female character, similar to kikimora. Usually invisible, it can take the form of a black woman with long shaggy hair, which she combs, sitting on a yarn.

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 ('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.

See also

* Alp (folklore)
* Basty
* Batibat
* Enchanted Moura
* 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

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. .
*

Further reading

* Barešin, Sandra. "Mora kao nadnaravno biće tradicijske kulture" are as Supernatural Being of Traditional Culture In: ''Ethnologica Dalmatica'' br. 20 (2013): 39-68. https://hrcak.srce.hr/107477
* Batten, Caroline R. “Dark Riders: Disease, Sexual Violence, and Gender Performance in the Old English ''Mære'' and Old Norse ''Mara''.” In: ''The Journal of English and Germanic Philology'' 120, no. 3 (2021): 352–80. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jenglgermphil.120.3.0352.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mare (Folklore)
German legendary creatures
Scandinavian legendary creatures
Scandinavian folklore
English folklore
Slavic legendary creatures
Sleep in mythology and folklore
Supernatural legends
Germanic legendary creatures