Max Müller contends that the earlier Aryan name for the Ribhus, namely Arbhus, is identical with the Greek Orpheus. Philologists, by the aid of the earlier Sanscrit writings, have been enabled to get at the roots of many Greek names, which formerly defied investigation. We see in the musical influence of Orpheus over trees, rocks, and mountain torrents, but a highly artistic development of the original Aryan storm-wind myth. By certain well understood philological steps, the term Arbhus has passed, in its Teutonic descent, into Albs, Alb, or Alp, which in the plural yields Elbe and Elfen, the equivalents of our English Elf and Elves.
Another remnant of the Aryan nomenclature of the train of Odin, the wild huntsman, may be found in the word mârt or maur, as presented in the English word nightmare, and the French couchemar, which are evidently descended from the Maruts or wind-gods of the Vedas. The nightmare is known to result chiefly from that form of dyspepsia termed flatulent. The corruption of the word in English to mare has given rise to some singular blunders, and none greater or more absurd than that perpetrated by Fuseli, the Royal Academician, in his celebrated picture of "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 "Miscellanies," describes one phase of the superstition as a remnant of witchcraft. "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 "ephialtes, or nightmare, is called by common people witch-riding." He traces the superstition to the Gothic or Scandinavian Mara, "a spectre of the night."
In classical mythology Pan was regarded as the author of sudden frights or groundless alarms. Dr. Adam, in his "Roman Antiquities," says that Faunus and Sylvanus were "supposed to be the same with Pan." He further adds,—"There were several rural deities called Fauni, who were believed to occasion the nightmare."
It is not improbable that the modern equine form of the hag may have resulted from ordinary punning. Lluellin (1679) has the following stanza, which refers to the power of coral over the nightmare. Hence the prejudice in favour of coral beads for children which obtains to this day:—
Some the night-mare hath prest
With that weight on their breast,
No returnes of their breath can passe.
But to us the tale is addle,
We can take off her saddle,
And turn out the night-mare to grasse.
Another old writer, Holiday, in his "Marriage of the Arts," deprecates the practice of relying on charms, "that your stables may bee alwies free from the queene of the goblins." He, however, makes the night-hag equestrian or jockey, and not equine. Herrick, too, in his "Hesperides," is both correct and explicit on the subject. He says:—
Hang up hooks and shears to scare
Hence the hag that rides the mare
Till they be all over wet
With the mire and the sweat;
This observed, the manes shall be
Of your horses all knot free.
The term "nightmare," in some instances, may have been applied to a witch transformed into a mare by means of a magic bridle, and ridden with great violence by the very party at whose bedside she had previously metamorphosed into a steed, on the back of which she had galloped to the witches' revel. If the man-horse contrived to slip off the bridle, and throw it over the witch's head, she immediately became transformed into a mare, and was frequently, according to popular belief, subjected to much harsh usage. There appears, however, to be little doubt that the night-mares are legitimately descended from the Aryan Maruts, the "couriers of the air," who rode the winds in the "wild hunt," or "furious host," headed by Odin, or the renowned spectre horseman of mediæval legends. Kelly says, "these riders, in all other respects identical with the Maruts, are in some parts of Germany called Wabriderske, i.e., Valkyrs. In some of the tales that are told of them they still retain their old divine nature; in others they are brought down to the level of mere earthly witches. If they ride now in stables, without locomotion, it is because they swept of old through the air on their divine coursers. Now they steal by night to the beds of hinds and churls; but there was a time when they descended from Valhalla to conceive, in the embrace of a mortal, the demi-god whom they afterwards accompanied to the battle-field, to bear him thence to the hall of Odin."
I entertain a strong impression that the singular ceremony practised at Ashton-under-Lyne, at Easter, styled "Riding the Black Lad," contains some remnant of the tradition of the spectre huntsman. Its origin is confessed on all hands to be extremely doubtful. The severities of a Sir Ralph Assheton, in the reign of Henry VI., may have had something to do with it, but they alone could scarcely have perpetuated the legend and its accessories. The custom of perambulating the parish boundaries, still in use in many parts of England, and which, in my own youth, was performed with much solemnity by the Corporation of Preston, may likewise have had some influence upon the practice. At the close of the Preston perambulation, it was customary for the younger spirits "to leap the colt-hole," as it was termed, the said "colt-hole" being a ditch or fosse on Preston Marsh. Some unlucky wights occasionally fell into the said ditch, to the infinite amusement of the graver dignitaries, as well as to the merriment of the holiday schoolboys attendant. Dr. Hibbert Ware, referring to the Ashton custom, says:—"An effigy is made of a man in armour, and the image is deridingly emblazoned with some emblems of the occupation of the first couple that are linked together in the course of the year." The story of the enforcing of the weeding of "Carr gulds" (an obnoxious plant) from the land by Sir Ralph's rough riding, may have had some foundation in fact; but it is rather strange a successor should have "abolished the usage for ever, and reserved from the estate a small sum of money, for the purpose of perpetuating, in an annual ceremony, the memory of the dreaded visits of the Black Knight."
Spelman, in his "Icenia," referring to the Tilney legend concerning Tom Hickathrift and his giant-slaying, clearly shows that the "monstrous giant," slain by Tom, armed with his axle and wheel, like the Cornish Tom the Tinkheard, and his followers, was none other than the tyrant lord of the manor who sought by violence to rob his copy-hold tenants out of their right of pasture in the common field.