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The Nightmare, in which he represents the fiend in equine form bestraddling his unhappy victim. Kelly says he can find accounts of the nightmare assuming the forms of a mouse, a weasel, a toad, and even a cat, but never that of a horse or a mare, except in the picture referred to. The fact is, the genuine nightmare is the rider who plies his spurs and grips the reins, and not a mare that has usurped the function of a jockey. Aubrey, in his
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Miscellanies, describes one phase of the superstition as a remnant of witchcraft.
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To hinder the nightmare, they hang in a string a flint with a hole in it. It is to prevent the nightmare, viz., the hag, from riding their horses, who will sometimes sweat at night. The flint thus hung does hinder it. Brand observes that
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He traces the superstition to the Gothic or Scandinavian Mara,
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Roman Antiquities, says that Faunus and Sylvanus were
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He further adds,--
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There were several rural deities called Fauni, who were believed to occasion the nightmare.