Mare

Etymology

The word mare, through Middle English mare, comes from the Old English feminine noun mære, which had numerous variants: mare, mere, mær, etc. It is etymologically unrelated to its homonym mare, meaning female horse.

Cognates in other languages includes:

Norse: Old Norse: mara → Danish: mare, Faroese: marra, Icelandic: mara, Norwegian: mare, mara, Swedish: mara

Dutch: Old Dutch: mare → merrie (Dutch: nachtmerrie)

Low German: Low German: mahrt, mårt, môr

High German: Old High German: mahr, mara (glossed in Latin as "incuba") → Middle High German: mar, mare → German: Mahr (Nachtmahr), Mare, Mara

These in turn come from Proto-Germanic *marōn. The -mar in French cauchemar ('nightmare') is borrowed from the Germanic through Old French mare.

Most scholars trace the word back to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root *mer-, associated with crushing, pressing and oppressing, or according to other sources 'to rub away' or 'to harm'. Compare this to Finnish and Karelian, where the creature is roughly called "pressinger" (Finnish: painajainen, Karelian: painajaini), or "ridinger" (Finnish: ajajainen). Further, in Danish and Norwegian, the word for 'nightmare' is "mare ride" (Danish: mareridt, Norwegian: mareritt); in Icelandic, the word for 'nightmare' is "mare tread", or "mare trample" (Icelandic: martröð); whereas in Swedish and Finnish, the word for 'nightmare' is "mare dream" (Swedish: mardröm, Finnish: painajaisuni).

However, other etymologies have been suggested. For example, Éva Pócs saw the term as being cognate with the Greek term Moros (μόρος, from Proto-Indo-European *móros) meaning "doom". There is no definite answer among historians about the time of origin of the word. According to the philologist Yeleazar Meletinsky, a Slavonic root, Proto-Slavic *mara, passed into the Germanic language no later than the 1st century BC.

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 marflätor ('mare-braids') or martovor ('mare-tangles') in Swedish or marefletter and marefloker 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 martallar ('mare-pines') or in German as Alptraum-Kiefer ('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.

German folklore

In German folklore, the mare is related or analogous to the alp, a supernatural creature of similar nature; the German word for nightmare being Albtraum (lit. 'alp dream', or Alptrück (lit. 'alp preassure'). In High German, the mare is known as Mara, Mare, or Mahr (masculine noun, i.e. "der Mahr"); in Low German as mårt, Mahrt, or de môr in Pomerania and Rügen. It rides on sleepers, making it hard to 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 mårt 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 untangle (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, Schlawe district, 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 demonstrate that certainly by the Late Middle Ages, the distinction between the Mare, the Alp, and the Trute (Drude) was being blurred, the Mare being described as the Alp's mother.

Nordic folklore

The Scandinavian mare is normally a female being which "rides" the victims chest, called "mare riding" (Danish: mareridt, Norwegian: mareritt, Swedish: marritt), causing severe anxiety and feelings of suffocation. It assaults both people and animals, and is often said to be a young beautiful woman, although she could also be depicted as a nasty older lady. It has the ability to shapeshift, and can also appear as a man, or a furry animal, sometimes a cat, sometimes a dog; in a couple of cases, even a bird, most often an owl. The given basis for mares are many and varied. Some legends speak of mares as the soul of a person, alive or dead (see hamr), such as a sinful woman, someone wronged, or someone who died unmarried.

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 (mara) 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 (Þorkell Silfri) 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 marr and mara."

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" (marlíðendr or kveldriða) and causing serious trampling bruises on Gunnlaug Thorbjornsson. The marlíðendr mentioned here has been equated to the mara by commentators.

Slavic folklore

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

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

In Croatian, mora 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 zmora or mora, or noćnik/noćnica ('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 mora enters the room through the keyhole, sits on the chest of the sleeper and tries to strangle them (hence moriti, 'to torture', 'to bother', 'to strangle', umoriti, 'to tire', 'to kill', umor, 'tiredness' and umoran, 'tired'). To repel moras, children are advised to look at the window or to turn the pillow and make the sign of the cross on it (prekrstiti jastuk); in the early 19th century, Vuk Karadžić mentions that people would repel moras 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.

Polish folklore

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

It could be a soul of a person, alive or dead (see hamr), such as a sinful woman, someone wronged or someone who died without confession. 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. Zmoraś Mario instead of Zdrowaś Mario (an inverted version of Ave Maria) at baptism, the child would become a zmora.

The zmora could be recognized by the joined unibrow (żrośnięte brwi), according to the lore of the Wielkopolska (Greater Poland), including Kreis Posen (Poznań County) where a zmora of either sex is recognizable by huge black eyebrows joined in the middle above the nose. Black unibrow is ascribed to zmora or the morus (likened to a ciátow, ciátow '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. 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. 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.

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

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. Some say she sticks in her tongue while mounting the victim on his chest, and sucks the blood from his tongue, leaving him emaciated.