nightmare

horses and goblins in the dark

I think 'nightmare' is one of the most enchanting words in the English language. It conjures up images of jet-black female horses, trotting through the night, entering your subconscious with terrifying neighs and ominously waving manes. And while they breathe dark images into your sleep, they trample your heart with their hooves, just before they disappear again, and you wake up.

Only the word 'nightmare' has nothing to do with female horses. It has everything to do with mares, evil spirits or goblins who, according to medieval folklore, visited people in their sleep and took their breath away by sitting on their chest or squeezing their throat. When the sleeping person woke up, exhausted and sweaty, he knew that he had been ridden by the mare. These mares, who were often depicted as female beings, derived their pleasure not only from tormenting sleeping people, but also from riding horses, which were found in the stable in the morning, exhausted and with knots in their manes.

With the passing of centuries, the mare figure disappeared from the imagination of people, but nightmares didn’t disappear from their lives. With the evil goblins long forgotten, people started linking nightmares to another mare in their language - the mare that means ‘female horse’. The resemblance is completely coincidental but so it happened that we started spinning folksy tales about demon horses spooking us at night.