Mare

Lore & Background

The word mare comes from the Old English feminine noun mære, with cognates across Germanic and Slavic languages including Old Norse mara, German Mahr, and Polish mara. These trace back to Proto-Germanic *marōn and the Proto-Indo-European root *mer-, associated with crushing, pressing, and oppressing. In Nordic folklore, the mare is attested as early as the 13th century Ynglinga saga, where King Vanlandi Sveigðisson of Uppsala lost his life to a nightmare conjured by the Finnish sorceress Huld. The king complained the nightmare "rode him," then "trod on his legs" until his men seized his feet, at which the creature fatally "pressed down on his head." In German folklore, the mare is related to the alp, with the German word for nightmare being Albtraum. The mare enters a house through a hole the carpenter forgot to plug, and can be captured by plugging the hole. In one tale, a male môr caught this way became a woman's husband, fathering her children, but left after being told about the hole, returning just once a year.

In Their Own Story

The mare was believed to ride horses, leaving 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. 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, including frogs, cats, horses, hares, dogs, oxen, birds, and often bees and wasps. In Slavic folklore, some believe a mora enters the room through the keyhole, sits on the chest of the sleeper and tries to strangle them. 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; 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.

Reader's Guide

To identify a mare in folklore, investigators should note its characteristic behavior of sitting or riding on the chest of sleepers, causing suffocation, cold sweats, and sleep paralysis. The mare often appears as a female being with shapeshifting abilities, able to transform into animals such as frogs, cats, horses, hares, dogs, oxen, birds, bees, and wasps. In German folklore, the mare (called Mahr, Mara, or mårt) rides on sleepers, making it hard to breathe, or lies over the chest, making its victim drenched with sweat, whereby the victim is able to groan but otherwise rendered speechless and spellbound, unable to waken unless called by his baptismal name. The mårt is usually a girl with a bad foot according to one source. To ward off a Mahrt, 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 to 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. In Pomerania, an upside down pair of slippers left by the bed will ward it off. A Westphalian charm from Wilhelmsburg near Paderborn records a prayer used to ward off mares.

Did You Know?

• The word 'mare' traces back to the Proto-Indo-European root *mer-, associated with crushing, pressing, and oppressing.
• In the 13th century Ynglinga saga, King Vanlandi Sveigðisson of Uppsala was killed by a nightmare conjured by the Finnish sorceress Huld.
• In Swedish, entangled hair caused by the mare is called 'marflätor' (mare-braids) or 'martovor' (mare-tangles).
• The German word for nightmare, 'Albtraum', literally means 'alp dream', linking the mare to the supernatural alp creature.
• In Slavic folklore, a mora can be repelled by leaving a broom upside down behind the door or putting a belt on top of the sheets.