Mare (folklore)

The Nightmare, by Henry Fuseli

A mare or nightmare (Proto-Germanic: *marōn; Old English: mære; Old Norse: mara; German: Mahr; Dutch: nachtmerrie; Swedish: mara; Icelandic: mara; Faroese: mara; Danish: mare; Norwegian: mare/mara) is a spirit or goblin in Germanic folklore which rides on people's chests while they sleep, bringing on bad dreams (or "nightmares").^[1] The mare is attested as early as in the Norse Ynglinga saga from the 13th century,^[2] but the belief itself is likely to be considerably older. The belief has inspired a great deal of fiction, including the 2011 Swedish film Marianne in which the protagonist dreams of a creature that sits on his chest while he sleeps. As in English, the name appears in the word for "nightmare" in the Nordic languages (e.g. the Swedish word "mardröm" literally meaning mara-dream, the Norwegian word "mareritt" literally meaning mare-ridden or the Icelandic word "martröð" meaning mara-dreaming repeatedly). The mare is often similar to the mythical creatures succubus and incubus, and was likely inspired by sleep paralysis^{[citation needed]}.

Etymology

The word "mare" comes (through Middle English mare) from Old English mære, mare, or mere, all feminine nouns. These in turn come from Common Germanic *marōn. *Marōn is the source of Old Norse mara (from which come Icelandic, Faroese, and Swedish mara, Danish mare and Norwegian mare/mara), Dutch (nacht)merrie, and German Mahr. The -mar in French cauchemar ("nightmare") is borrowed from the Germanic through Old French mare.^[1] The word can ultimately be traced back to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root *mer-, "to rub away" or "to harm".^[3]

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

Beliefs

The mara was also 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 marflätor "mare-braids" or martovor "mare-tangles" in Swedish or marefletter and marelokker in Norwegian. The belief probably originated as an explanation to the Polish plait phenomena, a hair disease. Even trees could be ridden by the mara, resulting in branches being entangled. The undersized, twisted pine-trees growing on coastal rocks and on wet grounds are known in Sweden as martallar "mare-pines" or in German as Alptraum Kiefer.

According to author and researcher Paul Devereux, mora included witches who took on the form of animals when their spirits went out while they were in trance. Animals such as frogs, cats, horses, hares, dogs, oxen, birds and often bees and wasps.^[4]

Like other trance practitioners, mora witches traditionally owed their abilities to being born with a caul. In their metamorphosed form they could fly through the night, walk on or hover above water and travel in a sieve. Dead mora witches were said to return as ghosts.

By region

Poland

In Polish folklore, mora are the souls of living people that leave the body during the night, and are seen as wisps of straw or hair or as moths. In certain Slavic languages, variations of the word mora actually mean moth (such as in Slovak language mora or another example is Czech word můra).

Serbia

In Serbia, "Noćnik" or "noćnica" is the one blamed for these type nightmares.

Croatia

In Croatian, "mora" refers to a "nightmare". Mora or Mara is one of the spirits from ancient Slav mythology. Mara was a dark spirit that takes a form of a beautiful woman and then visits men in their dreams, torturing them with desire, and dragging life out of them. Other names were nocnica, "night woman" in Polish, or éjjeljáró, "night-goer" in Hungarian.^[5]

Germany

In Germany they were known as mara, mahr, mare, in Romania they were known as Moroi. In Slavic countries the terms included mora, zmoras, morava and moroi; in France, such a witch was the cauchemar. Hungarian folklorist Éva Pócs traces the core term back to the Greek word μόρος moros, death.^[4]

See also

• Maya (illusion)
• Moroi
• Nightmare
• Sleep paralysis, medical term for the condition the mara is thought to cause.
• Slavic fairies

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Bjorvand and Lindeman (2007:719–720).
2. ^ Ynglinga saga, stanza 13, in Hødnebø and Magerøy (1979:12).
3. ^ "mer-" in Pickett et al. (2000). Retrieved on 2008-11-22.
4. ^ ^{a b} Haunted Land, Piatkus, 2001, p 78
5. ^ Between the living and the dead, Éva Pócs, 1999, p 46

References

• Bjordvand, Harald and Lindeman, Fredrik Otto (2007). Våre arveord. Novus. ISBN 978-82-7099-467-0.
• Hødnebø, Finn and Magerøy, Hallvard (eds.) (1979). Snorres kongesagaer 1, 2nd ed. Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. ISBN 82-05-22184-7.
• Pickett, Joseph P. et al. (eds.) (2000). The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-395-82517-2.

• Paul Devereux, Haunted Land: Investigations into Ancient Mysteries and Modern Day Phenomena, Piatkus Publishers, London, 2001