Legend · České Budějovice
The nightmare (můra)
According to folk belief a můra was a living person whose soul left the body at night. It sat on sleepers’ chests, choked them and took small forms, such as a blade of straw. In Budějovice two stories were told of it: one of a cobbler and his journeyman, another of a miller’s lad.
People once believed that a můra came to sleepers and choked them. It could even take the form of a tiny thing no one would notice by day.
One Budějovice cobbler had two journeymen. The first was healthy; the second, who had come to him only recently, was thin and always ailing. They slept in a little room beside the master’s bedroom. At night the new journeyman sighed and moaned so loudly that the cobbler could not sleep.
When this had gone on a long time, the master decided to stay awake one night. He entered the little room and waited by the sleeping youth. Until eleven it was quiet. The journeyman lay still and did not move. Hardly had eleven struck, though, when the moaning began. The master saw nothing on the chest — only, they say, a blade of straw. He seized it. The journeyman woke with a cry, and from that night slept calmly.
A similar story was told of a miller’s lad. The pattern is the same: pressure on the chest, a small form, and relief when the “můra” is caught. Today we would say sleep paralysis. Then they said můra.
How it really was
The můra is a figure of Czech folk demonology that according to belief choked sleepers; what people described is today called sleep paralysis and is experienced by about one in eight people.
The můra is an attested folk idea, not a literary invention. Otto’s Encyclopaedia and the Ethnographic Encyclopaedia of Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia describe the same thing our chapter tells: a being that comes to sleepers at night, presses on their chests and chokes them, and that takes small forms, among them a blade of straw.
What people described matches sleep paralysis — a real, common neurological state. The legend is the old name for a sensation that still wakes people at night.
Where to follow the legend
This legend has no street address. It takes place in bed — and it still does.
Where we know it from
- Ottův slovník naučný, heslo Můra (mytologie), 1901
- Národopisná encyklopedie Čech, Moravy a Slezska, heslo můra, mora, morous, morák; Etnologický ústav AV ČR
- Encyklopedie Českých Budějovic, heslo pověsti
- AMBROŽ, Václav. Ze starých Českých Budějovic. České Budějovice: Stráž lidu, 1921
Version without embellishment
Hlavní verze vypráví, co mistr našel na tovaryšově hrudi. Tahle zůstane v posteli s tovaryšem, který je vzhůru a nemůže se pohnout.
Můra – Bez příkras