| Nightmare:
(Old English night and mara, a spectre). A disorder of
the digestive functions during sleep, inducing the temporary belief that
some animal or demon is sitting on the chest. Among savages and
primitive people it is thought that the affection proceeds from the
attentions of an evil spirit. Keysler in his very curious work,
Antiquitates selectae Septentrionales et Celticae, has collected many
interesting particulars concerning the nightmare. Nachtmar,
he says, is from Mair, an old woman, because the spectre which
appears to press upon the breast and impede the action of the lungs is
generally in that form. The English and Dutch words coincide with
the German. The French cochemar is Mulier incumbens or
Incuba. The Swedes use Mara alone, as we learn from
the Historia Seucorum Gothorumque of Eric Olaus, where he states
that Valender, the son of Suercher, succeeded to the throne of his father,
who was suffocated by a dæmon in his sleep, of
that kind which by the scribes is called Mara. Others, "we
suppose Germans," conrinues Keysler, "call it Hanon Tramp.
The French peasantry call it Dianus which is a corruption either of
Diana or of Dæmonium Meridianum for it
seems there is a belief (which Keysler, not improbably thinks may be
derived from a false interpretation of an expression in the 91st Psalm
('the destruction that wasteth at noon-day') that persons are most
exposed to such attacks at that time and, therefore, women in childbed are
then never left alone. But though the Dæmonioum
Meridianum is often used for Ephialtes, nevertheless it is more
correctly any sudden and violent attack which deprives the patient of this
senses. In some parts of Germany, the name given to this disorder is
den alp, or das Alp-dructen, either from the 'mass' which
appears to press on the sufferer or from Alp or Alf (elf).
In Franconia it is die Drud or das Druddructen, from the
Druid or Weird Women, and there is a believe that it may not only be
cashed away, but be made to appear on the morrow in human shape, and lend
something required of it by the following charm: -
Druid to-morrow
So will I borrow."
These Druids, it seems,
were not only in the habit of riding men, but horses also, and in order to
keep them out of the stables, the salutary pentalpha (which bears
the name of Druden-fuss, Druid's foot) should be written on the
stable doors, in consecrated chalk, on the night of St. Walburgh. We
must not omit that our English familiar appellation 'Trot' is traced up to
"Druid" "a decrepit old woman such as the Sagas might be," and the same
may perhaps be said of a Scottish Saint, Triduana or Tredwin.
In Ihre's Glossary, a somewhat different
account of the Mara is given. Here again, we find the
'witch-riding' of horses, against which a stone amulet is provided by
Aubrey, similar to one which we are about to notice immediately below.
Among the incantations by which the
nightmare may be chased away, Reginald Scot has recorded the following
in his Discovery of Witchcraft.
"St. George, St. George, our lady's knight,
He walked by day so did he by night:
Until such times as he her found,
He her beat and he her bound,
Until her troth to him plight,
He would not come to her that night."
"Item," continues the same
ingenious author, "hand a stone over the afflicted person's bed, which
stone hath naturally such a hole in it, as wherein a string may be put
through it, and so be hanged over the diseased or bewitched party, be it
man, woman, or horse."
Every reader of the above lines will be reminded of the similar charm
which Shakespeare has put into the mouth of Edgar as Mad Tom in King
Lear.
"Saint Withold footed thrice the Wold;
He met the night-mare and her ninefold
Bid her alight,
And her troth plight
And aroint thee, witch, aroint thee."
Another charm of earlier
date occurs in Chaucer's Miller's Tale. When the simple Carpenter
discovers the crafty Nicholas in his feigned abstraction, he thinks he may
perhaps be had-ridden, and addresses him thus: -
" I crouch the fro Elves and fro wikid wightes
And therewith the night-spell he seide arightes,
On four halvis of the house about,
And on the dreshfold of the dore without,
'Jesu Christ, and Seint Benedight,
Blesse this house from evrey wikid wight,
Fro the night's mare, the wite paternoster,
Where wennist thou Seint Peter's sister."
A more modern author has
pointed to some other formularies, and has noticed that Asmodeus was the
fiend of most evil repute on these occasions. In the Otia
Imperiala of Gervase of Tilbury, some other protecting charms are said
to exist. To turn to the medical history of the Incubus Pliny has
recommended two remedies for this complaint; one sufficiently simple, wild
pæony seed. Another, which it would not be
easy to discover in any modern pharmacopœia, is
a decoction in wine and oil of the tongue, eyes, liver, and bowels of a
dragon, wherewith, after it has been left to cool all night in the open
air, the patient should be anointed every morning and evening.
Dr. Bond, a physician, who
tells us that he himself was much afflicted with the nightmare, published
an Essay of the Incubus in 1753. At the time at which he
wrote, medical attention appears to have very little called to the
disease, and some of the opinions hazarded were sufficiently wild and
inconclusive. Thus Dr. Willis said it was owing to some incongruous
matter which is mixed with the nervous fluid in the cerebellum (de
Anima Brutorum); and Bellini thought it imaginary, and to be
attributed to the idea of some demon which existed in the mind the day
before. Both of these writers might have known better if they would
have turned to Fuchsius (with whom Dr. Bond appears to be equally
acquainted) who in his work de Curandi Ratione, published as early
as 1548, has an excellent chapter (I., 31) on the causes, symptoms, and
cure of nightmare, in which he attributes it to repletion and
indigestion, and recommends the customary discipline.
Resource List - Entry taken
verbatim from:
(b)
"Encyclopaedia
of Occultism" by Lewis Spence. ©1959
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