| Mare.
The supposed mare (demon) which during the night sites on the chest and
causes feelings of suffocation. Very occasionally mare refers to the
nightmare dream itself. Mare is an Old Teutonic stem (Old
English mare, demon, quite distinct from Old English mere, a
female horse); it is found also in the French word for nightmare,
cauchemar (caucher, to trample). Very often it is used
interchangeably with incubus, as in the early Anglo-Saxon Glosses
(about 700) and in Bacon (1626): "The incubus, which we call the
mare." The mare (as well as the incubus) was also known by the scientific
name, ephialtes (Greek = to leap upon); and in German by alp
or mara.
The picture of the mare remains very
constant in all accounts; the early nineteenth-century work, The
Philosophy of Sleep, by Robert Macnish (1830) gives the common picture:
A monstrous hag squatting upon his
breast - mute, motionless and malignant; an incarnation of the evil spirit
- whose intolerable weight crushes the breath out of his body, and whose
fixed, deadly, incessant stare petrifies him with horror and makes his
very existence insufferable.
While the reality of the mare was accepted
by the standard demonologists, King James I in his Demonology (1597)
denied it, answering his own question: Is the "mare, which takes folks
sleeping in their beds, a kind of these spirits?" no, it is
but a natural sickness, which the
mediciners have given that name of incubus unto, ab incubando,
because it is a thick phlegm, falling into our breast upon the heart,
while we are sleeping, intercludes so our vital spirits, and takes all
power from us, and makes us think that there were some unnatural burden or
spirit lying upon us, and holding us down.
The mare also attacked horses, and Sir
Thomas Brone (1646) tells how a stone hung up in the stables prevents the
disease. [See further, Nightmare, Night Spell] (x)
Nightmare (coming soon)
Night Spell. A charm against
harm by night, especially against the nightmare of mare. In Chaucer's
Miller's Tale, the carpenter recites a white paternoster as a charm
against the night verye [monster]:
Jesu Christ and Saint Benedict,
Bless this house from every wicked wight.
Another invocation was mentioned by
Fletcher in one of his plays (1619):
St. George, St. George . . .
He walks by day, he walks by night.
In his Compendium Maleficarum
(1626), Guazzo gave directions for securing protection during sleep
by reciting holy psalms and prayer, such
as Qui habitat in adiutorio altissimi or In te Domine speravi,
or some such orison. Let them make the sign of the cross, reciting
the Salve regina mater misericordiae, the paternoster, the Ave Maria,
&c., if they would be safe from such snares. Let them have by them a
waxen Agnus Dei blessed by the pope, or some holy relics. For such
devotions are the safest protection and rampart against all the wiles of
the prince of darkness.
[See further, Charms]
Resource List: entries taken verbatim from
original source:
(x)
"The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology." Rossell Hope Robbins
(1912). Bonanza Books. New York. ©1959. 1981 Edition.
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