For example, Danish has “mareridt” (a nightmare), which means that a mare has ridden on you. A mare is a spirit of sorts that, according to folklore, would sit or ride on people at night causing them discomfort and bad dreams. Does your language have peculiar words like this?

10 comments

  1. Huh. Sounds very much like Night Terrors, doesn’t it?

    I never had them, but i heard people describing them similar to your descriptions

  2. > A mare is a spirit of sorts that, according to folklore, would sit or ride on people at night causing them discomfort and bad dreams

    That is also what the English “night**mare**” refers to. Same goes for the Swedish *mardröm* (lit. “mare dream”).

  3. In Polish “mara” is also a sort of a spirit that haunts you usually in your dreams. So I guess this is either a PIE cognate or just a coincidence. Our word for nightmare is koszmar and it comes from French – cauchemar.

    As for my example I’d would say that many people think that the city of Częstochowa comes from words często – often, and chować się – to hide. So the town of Oftenhides. In reality it was probably someone who’s name was Częstoch and they owned the town at some point in time.

  4. The Italian ‘incubo’ has practically the same etymon, derived from the late Latin *(daemon) incubus* ‘(evil spirit) who is above’, a derivative of *incubare* ‘to lie above’.

    Interestingly, from *cubare* also derives ‘covare’, which indicates both the hatching of eggs and the incubation period of a human disease, but in specialist language, the verb ‘incubare’ is used in both cases.

    Surely there must be many more examples, but I cannot think of them now.

  5. The German *Alptraum*/*Albtraum* comes from *Alben*, these are Elves; but evil ones.

  6. Finnish word for a nightmare is “painajainen” (painaja=pusher) and it comes from belief that some dark creature pushes your chest at night and causes you to paralyze and see horrible things.

    “Revontulet” (northern lights) means fox’s fire and it comes from old belief that those are formed by sparks from firefoxes, mythical creatures whose fur glows in the dark.

  8. There’s an idiom that’s known all over Germany, Switzerland and Austria but from what I could find out, it exists in two different versions which each have their own, independent meaning.

    In central and northern Germany, the idiom goes: “wissen, wo Barthel den Most holt”, which translates to “knowing where Barthel gets his cider.” The meaning of this version is to be someone very knowledgable. If you know where Bartel gets his cider, you know how things roll, you’re an expert, you know what you’re talking about etc.

    In Switzerland, Austria and southern Germany, the idiom usually goes: “jemandem zeigen, wo Bartel/Bartl/Bartli den Most holt” (“to show someone where Bartel/Bartli gets his cider”) or “ich zeig dir schon, wo Bartel/Bartli den Most holt.” (“I’ll show you where Bartel/Bartli gets his cider.”) Contrary to the version version which is a compliment, this southern version is a threat. If you show someone where Bartel/Bartli gets his cider, you’re making things unmistakably clear to them. (As in, you show them who’s the boss and you make them respect your authority.)

    Now, here’s for the etymology. Unfortunately, there’s no clear source. Rather, people have come up with various assumptions. A few possibilities for the northern version are:

    – In low German, “Batheld” (Bartholomew) is the stork. In traditional folk mythology, the stork of course brings the babies. So, if you know where the stork gets those babies, you know “how things work” in a sexual sense (the idiom can also be used that way).

    – A different possible source is that of a judge in Heilbronn called Barthel who lived around the year 1230. Supposedly this guy really loved cider (or alcohol in general) but the town cellar where this stuff was being stored was closed on weekends and during the night. Barthel however was really good at finding ways to sneak into the cider/alcohol cellar anyway.

    – According to a myth from Saxony, there was a guy called Bartholomäus Zimmer who lived in Meissen in the early 1500s. Supposedly this guy was a great expert on wine. He knew how to grow the perfect wine, he knew where to get the right plants, he knew how great wine should taste and he always sold extremely high-quality products to his customers. So if you’re Barthel, you’re the expert, you know what’s going on.

    – Yet another assumption talks about a man from Meissen called Peter Knoll. This guy also lived in the late middle ages and supposedly he often traveled to Burgundy where he purchased high-quality vines. Lore has it that Knoll was called “Partei” by his friends in Meissen, which later morphed into “Barthel”. So, Barthel was the expert because he knew where to get the best vines.

    When it comes to the southern version of this idiom, the following source is most likely the correct one: some time in the later 19th century, the Austrian poet Peter Rosegger (1843-1918) wrote a story called “Wo Barthel den Most herholt.” In this story, the protagonist called Barthel is a lowly servant whose job it is to regularly get the cider for his master. However, instead of going to the place his master told him to go (where you get the best cider), Barthel instead gets his cider at a nearby pub. The reason he does this is because there’s a very pretty girl who works at that pub and Barthel has a crush on her. So, by visiting this same pub every single week, he hopes to “make things clear” to her. Although this original scenario was very innocent, suppoedly the context was forgotten about and the only thing that was kept in our language was the idea of someone making something unmistakably clear to someone else. So nowadays, it’s used as a threat; something that a teacher might say to a student or a parent to their child.

    What’s confusing is that the northern and the southern version are most likely related somehow. I mean… they’ve got to be. Their wording is too similar for them to be unrelated. But it’s unclear how one might have developed from the other because their modern meanings are very different.

  9. I know the old saying “Vargavinter” (wolf-winter) but I don’t know if other languages has something similar. Think it derives from old, when rough winters were said to make hunting for prey hard for the wolves so that they started to come closer to human settlements.

  10. Exact same meaning in English. Sleep paralysis and the like I think. Elfshot is another one, meaning you’ve been hit in the side by an elf’s invisible arrow.

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