Ескі әңгімелердегі "Мара" құбылысы

Malicious entity in Germanic and Slavic folklore

A mare (, , ; mara in Old High German, Old Norse, and Swedish) is a malicious entity in Germanic and Slavic folklore that walks on people's chests while they sleep, bringing on nightmares.

The word mare comes (through Middle English mare) from the Old English feminine noun mære (which had numerous variant forms, including mare, mere, and mær). These in turn come from Proto Germanic marōn. Marōn is the source of , from which are derived mara; ; ; mare; mare/mara, Dutch: (nacht)merrie, and German: (Nacht)mahr. The mar in French cauchemar ('nightmare') is borrowed from the Germanic through Old French mare. 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 term Moros ([[Moros (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, the Proto Slavonic root mara passed into the Germanic language no later than the 1st century BC. 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'.

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. 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.

A Czech můra 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 mòra, and Slovak mora. 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, 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 mora, or noćnik/noćnica ('night creature', masculine and feminine respectively). In Romania they were known as Moroi. 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.

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. Unreliable source: date=January 2014

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. .