in a wrong way while being baptised, having multicoloured eyes or a unibrow (exclusive to the Kalisz region, Poland). If a woman was promised to marry a man, but then he married another, the rejected one could also become a mare at night. A very common belief was that one would become a mare if they mispronounced a prayer – e.g. instead of (an inverted version of Hail Mary). The mare can turn into animals and objects, such as cats, frogs, yarn, straw or apples. People believed that the mare drained people – as well as cattle and horses – of energy and/or blood at night. Protection practices included: drinking coffee before sleeping, taking the mare's hat, throwing a piece of a noose at the demon, sleeping with a leather, wedding belt or a scythe, inviting the mare for breakfast, changing one's sleeping position, smearing feces on the front door, leaving a bundle of hay in one's bed and going to sleep in another room. To protect livestock, some people hung mirrors over the manger (to scare the mare with its own face) or affixed dead birds of prey to the stable doors. Sometimes the horses were given red ribbons, or covered in a stinking substance. Other A Czech denotes a kind of elf or spirit as well as a sphinx moth or "night butterfly". Other Slavic languages with cognates that have the double meaning of moth are: Kashubian , and Slovak . In the northwest and south Russian traditions, the mara is a female character, similar to kikimora. Usually invisible, it can take the form of a black woman with long shaggy hair, which she combs, sitting on a yarn. In Croatian, refers to a 'nightmare'. 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. In Serbia, a mare is called , or ('night creature', masculine and feminine respectively). In Romania they were known as Moroi. Some believe that a enters the room through the keyhole, sits on the chest of the sleeper and tries to strangle them (hence , 'to torture', 'to bother', 'to strangle', , 'to tire', 'to kill', , 'tiredness' and , 'tired'). To repel s, children are advised to look at the window or to turn the pillow and make the