Mare (folklore)
[20] She could also entangle the hair of the sleeping man or beast,[21] resulting in "marelocks", called marflätor ('mare-braids') or martovor ('mare-tangles') in Swedish or marefletter and marefloker in Norwegian.
[23] 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).
[25] 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.
"[27] 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.
[20] While the mårt is usually a girl with a bad foot according to one source (a certain daughter of a smith in the village of Bork near Stargard having that reputation),[32] there are tales of the môr either male or female (see below).
A male môr who had been tormenting a woman was caught by this method in one tale; he became husband, fathering her children, but left after being told about the hole, returning just once a year.
[20] In another tale, a female môr was caught by the method of applying green paint on the hands, and the captor set her permanently on an oak which withered but always shivered.
[31] German Folklorist Adalbert Kuhn records a Westphalian charm or prayer used to ward off mares, from Wilhelmsburg near Paderborn: Hier leg' ich mich schlafen, Keine Nachtmahr soll mich plagen, Bis sie schwemmen alle Wasser, Die auf Erden fließen, Und tellet alle Sterne, Die am Firmament' erscheinen!
[36] Such charms are preceded by the example of the Münchener Nachtsegen of the fourteenth century (See Elf under §Medieval and early modern German texts).
[22]: #149 In a variant (also from Krakow County penned by the same woman), a farmhand marries the zmore but tests how she may suffer after plugging her conduit, only uplugging it after she is pregnant.
[22]: #150 [b] Another variant (from Lublin County) tells of a farmhand who catches the zmora in cat-for using St. Francis's belt; it turns out to be a girl in love with him.
To protect livestock, some people hung mirrors over the manger (to scare the mare with its own face) or sometimes the horses were given red ribbons, or covered in a stinking substance.
Other protection practices include: Polish mora and Czech můra denotes both a kind of elf (alp, nightmare) as well as a moth.
[56] The Polish term nocnice attested in the 15th century means an illness condition of a child, who suffers from spasmodic crying, for which demons were sometimes blamed.
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.
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.
