#night-mare

[vintageaviatorartwork]

Here's a quick little meme I made regarding a recent scene in the Batman roleplay I joined, featuring the one and only @askd0ctorjcrane (amongst many other wonderful people)!

I'm glad Night-Mare caused excitement!

(Here you'll also get to see my best attempt at visualizing my OC the War Profiteer)

[kiscoolen]

There’s this one photo of belle where she looks exactly like a horse and it’s great

I see this in my nightmares

[rp-kat]

Swordmaster

1997

Morbid Noizz  #3

[greenteabiscuit]

John Henry Fuseli: The Nightmare, 1781 | Detroit Institute of Arts

After its first exhibition at the Royal Academy of London in 1782,  the painting became uncommonly popular and the engraved version of it widely distributed. Fuseli sold the original and painted other versions. 

The popular engraving was underscored by a short poem by Erasmus Darwin, “Night-Mare”:  

“So on his Nightmare through the evening fog

Flits the squab Fiend o'er fen, and lake, and bog; Seeks some love-wilder'd maid with sleep oppress'd, Alights, and grinning sits upon her breast.”

Although there are plenty of interpretations, the painting generally portrays a dreaming woman and the content of her nightmare, that being the horse’s head and incubus, with an accent on sexuality and the unconscious.

[saint-of-the-pit]

The Night-Mare

  A Mare was believed to be a spectral visitor: a dark spirit that takes the form of an animal, a beautiful lover, a disfigured hag, or a demon which visited men in their dreams, and rode their chests, bringing on bad dreams or "nightmares," and dragging life out of them.

Aside from demons, Mares could also be witches, who were known to take on the form of an animal when their spirits went forth from their bodies in trance, called a “fetch”. These were usually small animals which left the body through the mouth, such as: moths, bees or wasps, birds, or frogs, and acted as a vessel for the disembodied soul, and as such was directly linked to the person’s fate and well-being. The fetch could also take the form of a larger animal, usually a hare, a cat or dog, a horse, or even an oxen. The fetch became corrupted when weaponized and projected forth for nefarious purposes, such as to cast malefic witchcraft or blight, or to drain the vitality of others, and becomes a foul hag or mare; akin to a projection of the ugliness of the person's true essence. Moths especially were associated with the Mare, and often finding them dead where one sleeps was believed to indicate her visitations.

The word "Mare" comes, through the Middle English mare, from Old English mære, mare, or mere. These in turn come from Common Germanic marōn, from which are derived the Dutch: "nachtmerrie”, and German: "nachtmahr”. The -mar in the French word “cauchemar,” meaning "nightmare,” is borrowed from the Germanic through the Old French mare. The word may ultimately be traced back to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root mer-, meaning "to rub away" or "to harm". Hungarian folklorist Éva Pócs endorses an alternate etymology, tracing the core term back to the Greek μόρος (Indo-European moros), meaning "death".

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, meaning "trample", "stamp on", related to "tread". Whereas the Swedish mardröm translates as "mare-dream".

The Mare was also believed to ride horses, which left them exhausted and covered in sweat by the morning, or sickened to the point of death. She could also entangle the hair of the sleeping man or beast, resulting in "marelocks," or “hag knots”. This is closely related to the lore surrounding Hag-Riding.

A Ward Against The Mare

 The German Folklorist Franz Felix 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!

Here I am lying down to sleep; No Night-Mare shall plague me Until they have swum through all Waters That flow upon the Earth, And counted all Stars That appear in the Firmament!

[caramel-bites]

Nite

Well I must say the ace went good! So I hope the tommorow one will be good too!

[puppyaddict]

oh my god i just hgad such a horriblie freaking nightmare i woke up sobbing with s lumpn he size of a tennis ball in my throat

[theladyvan]

A night-mare is fed before it is born.