The second half of "nightmare" in English isn't a horse, but a she-demon sitting on your chest

The English word "nightmare", split open, is "night" plus "mara". Many people think "mara" means horse, but it isn't.

This "mara", in Old English, is a she-demon that presses down on sleeping people. Old Norse calls it "mara", German calls it "alb" or "trude", Polish calls it "zmora"; the meaning is much the same: when you sleep at night, a woman, or a small thing, quietly slips into the room, crawls onto your chest, sits down, and presses on you. You are awake, but your eyes won't open, your mouth can't cry out, your chest feels like it's bearing a stone, and you want to move but can't.

In some versions, she also rides you. She takes advantage of your sleep, riding you here and there; in the morning when you wake up, you're drenched in sweat, your hair is tangled, your legs are sore and heavy, as if you've run all night. So in European countryside, if someone wakes up in the morning with their hair tied in a knot, people will say that's "the mara's knot", left behind after she rode you all night.

This phenomenon is what people today call "sleep paralysis", which Chinese people call "ghost pressing on the bed".

Ancient people naturally didn't understand the principles of sleep; they treated it as a named monster, and thought up many ways to deal with her. Old Germans drew a five-pointed star on the threshold, called "drude's foot", supposedly the demon couldn't get past it; some people put a knife or a pair of scissors at the bedside, with the blade pointing outward; some put their slippers upside down before sleep, toes pointing out of the bed; still others put a pinch of salt on the windowsill.

In 1781, the Swiss painter Fuseli painted a very famous work called "The Nightmare": a woman lying on her back on a bed, with a small monster crouching on her chest, and behind the curtain, a horse's head poking out. Later, many people thought the "mara" in that word referred to a horse, probably led astray by this painting. The painter himself was probably playing a pun.

The word traveled all the way into English and became "nightmare", still used to this day. When English speakers say "have a nightmare" every day, they are actually talking about being sat on the chest by a she-demon.

#Ghosts #网络转载 #北欧