A mare (, , ; in Old High German, Old Norse, and Swedish) is a malicious entity in Germanic and Slavic folklore that rides on people's chests while they sleep, bringing on nightmares. Etymology The word mare comes (through Middle English ) from the Old English feminine noun (which had numerous variant forms, including , , and ). These in turn come from Proto-Germanic . is the source of , from which are derived ; ; ; ; /, Dutch: (), and German: (). The -mar in French ('nightmare') is borrowed from the Germanic through Old French . Most scholars trace the word back to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root , associated with crushing, pressing and oppressing. or according to other sources 'to rub away' or 'to harm'. However, other etymologies have been suggested. For example, Éva Pócs saw the term as being cognate with the Greek (Indo-European ), meaning 'doom'. There is no definite answer among historians about the time of origin of the word. According to the philologist Yeleazar Meletinsky, the Proto-Slavonic root passed into the Germanic language no later than the 1st century BC. In Norwegian and Danish, the words for 'nightmare' are and respectively, which can be directly translated as 'mare-ride'. The Icelandic word has the same meaning ( from the verb , 'trample', 'stamp on', related to tread), whereas the Swedish translates as 'mare-dream'. Beliefs The mare was believed to ride horses, which left them exhausted and covered in sweat by the morning. She could also entangle the hair of the sleeping man or beast, resulting in "marelocks", called ('mare-braids') or ('mare-tangles') in Swedish or and in Norwegian. The belief probably originated as an explanation to the Polish plait phenomenon, a hair disease. Even trees were thought to be ridden by the mare, resulting in branches being entangled. The undersized, twisted pine-trees growing on coastal rocks and on wet grounds are known in Sweden as ('mare-pines') or in German as ('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). These included animals such as frogs, cats, horses, hares, dogs, oxen, birds and often bees and wasps. By region Scandinavia The mare is attested as early as in the Norse Ynglinga saga from the 13th century. Here, King Vanlandi Sveigðisson of