Mara (folklore)
Encyclopedia
Nightmare
A nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear or horror, but also despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror...
is a spirit
Spirit
The English word spirit has many differing meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body.The spirit of a living thing usually refers to or explains its consciousness.The notions of a person's "spirit" and "soul" often also overlap,...
or goblin
Goblin
A goblin is a legendary evil or mischievous illiterate creature, a grotesquely evil or evil-like phantom.They are attributed with various abilities, temperaments and appearances depending on the story and country of origin. In some cases, goblins have been classified as constantly annoying little...
in Germanic folklore
Germanic folklore
Germanic folklore is recorded folklore of the Germanic speaking peoples. It is often used as a starting point for the reconstruction of a Common Germanic mythology:*Dutch folklore*English folklore*German folklore*Scandinavian folklore...
which rides on people's chests while they sleep, bringing on bad dreams (or "nightmare
Nightmare
A nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear or horror, but also despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror...
s"). The mare is attested as early as in the Norse Ynglinga saga
Ynglinga saga
Ynglinga saga is a legendary saga, originally written in Old Norse by the Icelandic poet Snorri Sturluson about 1225. It was first translated into English and published in 1844....
from the 13th century, 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
Marianne (2011 film)
Marianne is a 2011 Swedish horror film, directed by Filip Tegstedt, that premiered at the 2011 Fantasia International Film Festival on 2 August 2011....
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
North Germanic languages
The North Germanic languages or Scandinavian languages, the languages of Scandinavians, make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages, a sub-family of the Indo-European languages, along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic 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
Succubus
In folklore traced back to medieval legend, a succubus is a female demon appearing in dreams who takes the form of a human woman in order to seduce men, usually through sexual intercourse. The male counterpart is the incubus...
and incubus
Incubus (demon)
An incubus is a demon in male form who, according to a number of mythological and legendary traditions, lies upon sleepers, especially women, in order to have intercourse with them. Its female counterpart is the succubus...
, and was likely inspired by sleep paralysis
Sleep paralysis
Sleep paralysis is paralysis associated with sleep that may occur in healthy persons or may be associated with narcolepsy, cataplexy, and hypnagogic hallucinations. The pathophysiology of this condition is closely related to the normal hypotonia that occurs during REM sleep. When considered to be a...
.
Etymology
The word "mare" comes (through Middle EnglishMiddle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
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
Old Norse
Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300....
mara (from which come Icelandic
Icelandic language
Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...
, Faroese
Faroese language
Faroese , is an Insular Nordic language spoken by 48,000 people in the Faroe Islands and about 25,000 Faroese people in Denmark and elsewhere...
, and Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...
mara, Danish
Danish language
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...
mare and Norwegian
Norwegian language
Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
mare/mara), Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
(nacht)merrie, and German Mahr. The -mar in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
cauchemar ("nightmare") is borrowed from the Germanic through Old French
Old French
Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...
mare. The word can ultimately be traced back to the reconstructed
Linguistic reconstruction
Linguistic reconstruction is the practice of establishing the features of the unattested ancestor of one or more given languages. There are two kinds of reconstruction. Internal reconstruction uses irregularities in a single language to make inferences about an earlier stage of that language...
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European language
The Proto-Indo-European language is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European languages, spoken by the Proto-Indo-Europeans...
root
Proto-Indo-European root
The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language are basic parts of words that carry a lexical meaning, so-called morphemes. PIE roots always have verbal meaning like "to eat" or "to run", as opposed to nouns , adjectives , or other parts of speech. Roots never occur alone in the language...
*mer-, "to rub away" or "to harm".
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 plaitPolish plait
Polish plait is a formation of hair. It can be viewed as a hairstyle similar to dreadlocks or a hair disease.-As a disease:...
phenomena, a hair disease. Even trees could be ridden by the mara, resulting in branches being entangled. The undersized, twisted pine-trees
Pine
Pines are trees in the genus Pinus ,in the family Pinaceae. They make up the monotypic subfamily Pinoideae. There are about 115 species of pine, although different authorities accept between 105 and 125 species.-Etymology:...
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
Paul Devereux
Paul Devereux is an author, researcher, lecturer, broadcaster, artist and photographer based in the Cotswolds, England. Devereux is a Research Fellow with the International Consciousness Research Laboratories group at Princeton University....
, 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.
Like other trance practitioners, mora witches traditionally owed their abilities to being born with a caul
Caul
A caul is a thin, filmy membrane, the amnion, that can cover a newborn's head and face immediately after birth.-Obstetrics:A child "born with the caul" has a portion of the amniotic sac or membrane remaining on the head. There are two types of cauls. The most common caul is adhered to the head...
. 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.
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 languagesSlavic languages
The Slavic languages , a group of closely related languages of the Slavic peoples and a subgroup of Indo-European languages, have speakers in most of Eastern Europe, in much of the Balkans, in parts of Central Europe, and in the northern part of Asia.-Branches:Scholars traditionally divide Slavic...
, variations of the word mora actually mean moth
Moth
A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...
(such as in Slovak
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...
language mora or another example is Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
word můra).
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.Germany
In Germany they were known as mara, mahr, mare, in Romania they were known as MoroiMoroi
A moroi is a type of vampire or ghost in Romanian folklore. A female moroi is called a moroaică...
. In Slavic countries the terms included mora, zmoras, morava and moroi; in France, such a witch was the cauchemar. Hungarian folklorist Éva Pócs
Éva Pócs
Éva Pócs is associate professor in the Department of Ethnography and Cultural Anthropology at Janus Pannonius University, Pécs, Hungary, and president of the Folklore Section of the Hungarian Ethnographic Society. She is an author of several books dealing with supernatural beliefs and patterns of...
traces the core term back to the Greek word μόρος moros, death.
See also
- Maya (illusion)Maya (illusion)Maya , in Indian religions, has multiple meanings, usually quoted as "illusion", centered on the fact that we do not experience the environment itself but rather a projection of it, created by us. Maya is the principal deity that manifests, perpetuates and governs the illusion and dream of duality...
- MoroiMoroiA moroi is a type of vampire or ghost in Romanian folklore. A female moroi is called a moroaică...
- NightmareNightmareA nightmare is an unpleasant dream that can cause a strong negative emotional response from the mind, typically fear or horror, but also despair, anxiety and great sadness. The dream may contain situations of danger, discomfort, psychological or physical terror...
- Sleep paralysisSleep paralysisSleep paralysis is paralysis associated with sleep that may occur in healthy persons or may be associated with narcolepsy, cataplexy, and hypnagogic hallucinations. The pathophysiology of this condition is closely related to the normal hypotonia that occurs during REM sleep. When considered to be a...
, medical term for the condition the mara is thought to cause. - Slavic fairiesSlavic fairiesFairies in Slavic mythology come in several forms and their names are spelled differently based on the specific language. Among the ones listed below there were also khovanets , dolia , polyovyk or polevoi , perelesnyk , lesovyk or leshyi , blud , mara Fairies in Slavic mythology come in several...