es were turned toward the knight and his
lady. "In God's name, tell me what thou art," shouted the knight; and
instantly, says the chronicler, "the bodily form of the lady melted
away, and was seen no more; whilst, with a cry of anguish and of terror,
an evil spirit of monstrous form rose from the ground, clave the chapel
roof asunder, and disappeared in the air."

In a Danish legend, the Mara betrays her affinity to the Nixies, or
Swan-maidens. A peasant discovered that his sweetheart was in the habit
of coming to him by night as a Mara. He kept strict watch until he
discovered her creeping into the room through a small knot-hole in the
door. Next day he made a peg, and after she had come to him, drove in
the peg so that she was unable to escape. They were married and lived
together many years; but one night it happened that the man, joking with
his wife about the way in which he had secured her, drew the peg from
the knot-hole, that she might see how she had entered his room. As she
peeped through, she became suddenly quite small, passed out, and was
never seen again.

The well-known pathological phenomena of nightmare are sufficient to
account for the mediaeval theory of a fiend who sits upon one's bosom
and hinders respiration; but as we compare these various legends
relating to the Mara, we see that a more recondite explanation is needed
to account for all her peculiarities. Indigestion may interfere with our
breathing, but it does not make beautiful women crawl through keyholes,
nor does it bring wives from the spirit-world. The Mara belongs to an
ancient family, and in passing from the regions of monkish superstition
to those of pure mythology we find that, like her kinsman the werewolf,
she had once seen better days. Christianity made a demon of the Mara,
and adopted the theory that Satan employed these seductive creatures as
agents for ruining human souls. Such is the character of the knight's
wife, in the monkish legend just cited. But in the Danish tale the
Mara appears as one of that large family of supernatural wives who are
permitted to live with mortal men under certain conditions, but who are
compelled to flee away when these conditions are broken, as is always
sure to be the case. The eldest and one of the loveliest of this family
is the Hindu nymph Urvasi, whose love adventures with Pururavas are
narrated in the Puranas, and form the subject of the well-known and
exquisite Sanskrit drama by Kalidasa.