Curses in Ireland come from the usual roots of mythology and include folk magic, charms, and were usually used for nefarious means. It was terrifyingly brutal, mustering dark feelings that marked people who had seen or maybe just heard about the events in question. May the cold north blast of misery nip your body, while your heart burns like fire. It did not always ensure peoples compliance, but it did have other grimly consoling uses, in assuring frustrated people that their pains would be avenged. Now, though, the main targets were sinful, antisocial parishioners. However, the main reason priests stopped throwing political maledictions lay elsewhere. George Lewis, The Bible, the Missal, and the Breviary: or, Ritualism Self-Illustrated in the Liturgical Books of Rome, i (Edinburgh, 1853), 232, 242, 2601. 1967; Connaught Telegraph, 2 Mar. Psychosomatically, it can heal, injure and even kill; intimidate, haunt and terrify; or invigorate, inspire and empower. ), The Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland (Cambridge, 2017); Bettina N. Kimpton, Blow the House Down: Coding, the Banshee, and Womans Place, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, xiii (1993); Sneddon, Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland; Jenny Butler, The Sdhe and Fairy Forts, in Simon Young and Ceri Houlbrook (eds. It is time we acknowledged the polish and power of the art of magic. Beggars also needed stories about how they had fallen on hard times. Also: First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 525, 530, 537. Mallacht - Celtic Curses Go n-ithe an cat th is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat. In 1930s County Clare, an American anthropologist discovered that maledictions, if uttered for cause, were credited with the power to ruin prosperous families, break unbelievers necks, and send people blind.144 Stories about lingering curses, uttered on land-grabbers generations ago, were rehearsed when their descendants died in strange circumstances. People who believed they were cursed occasionally wrote to newspaper agony aunts, describing themselves as being under an evil power, as if curses were identical with black witchcraft.164 Likewise, in the 1990s and early 2000s countryside, in places like County Limerick and County Tipperary and even rural Ulster, there were still farmers and veterinarians who had seen strange things and experienced weird agricultural misfortunes. Curse of the Stolen Cloak A rare Roman-era curse tablet found in England asks that the Celtic god Maglus punish a thief. Cursing was demanding, sophisticated, formidable and imposing. Hugh Dorian, The Outer Edge of Ulster: A Memoir of Social Life in Nineteenth-Century Donegal, ed. Some female beggars wore their hair down, as if to imply that they were already in the cursing pose. It mattered because curses were believed to be most powerful when their victims remained silent, as if dumbstruck by the lyrical ingenuity of the dreadful utterances.52 By contrast, people who instantly countered with clever replies could turn curses back on their authors. The beggars curse was an old idea that resonated powerfully in early nineteenth-century Ireland.84 This was because rapid population growth, a lack of official poverty relief and a parlous economy based on inefficiently subdivided land had unleashed a tidal wave of begging.85 You could find begging in all major cities, of course, but its vast scale in Ireland staggered travellers from Britain, Europe and America. The congregation laughed and even Charles himself chuckled. 1901; Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 13 Mar. Women and children elicited more sympathy, so husbands generally waited out of view. In Northern Ireland, as sectarian violence flared during the dark days of the Troubles, curses were sporadically revived. Bathed in righteous power, steeped in the Holy Spirit, it was obvious that they should possess awesome imprecations. For the imprecators themselves, cursing was a powerful form of coercion. Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, 258. St Brigids stone, Blacklion Co. Cavan. Archaeologists Find Ancient Magic Curse Tablet in Jerusalem In a world where people firmly believed in the existence of gods and goddesses, it is possible that the curse tablets made potential criminals think twice before committing a crime. Historic Ireland is famous for its superstitions, magic and alternative beliefs. Celtic language. Soon after the Catholic Associations foundation, in 1823, Members of Parliament in Westminster began complaining about the outrageously intimidating Irish clerics, who were frightening electors with horrid stories about priests curses sending people blind, as if that might be their punishment if they were so unwise as to opt for the wrong candidate.103 Protestant periodicals also started carrying scattered reports about priests using maledictions and altar denunciations to make their parishioners pay the Catholic rent, a regular fee to support the Catholic Association.104 One might be tempted to dismiss these sectarian writings as fabricated propaganda. In practice, they amounted to things like ill-wishing, the evil eye, and leaving rotting meat or eggs on a neighbours land to bring bad luck.33 Cursing, by contrast, was a just form of supernatural violence. Mal de Ojo of Mexico 2. Patrick Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (London, 1866), 547; Reidar Th. The beggars curse did not decline because it was formally disproved. 465, 83. Another clerical curse victim was Thomas Mahon, a retired policeman and possible child killer from Carna in County Galway. To make a curse stick, it was best to say something dreadful, complex and difficult to rebut. When Spells Worked Magic In ancient times, a curse could help you win in the stadium or in the courts, and a plea addressed to a demon could bring you the woman of your dreams. Partly this was because the church hierarchy was now firmly in control. Dr. James Butlers Catechism: Revised, Enlarged, Approved, and Recommended by the Four R.C. To illustrate: in a classic essay about anonymous threatening letters, sent to English farmers and grain-dealers in the late 1700s and 1800s, E. P. Thompson noticed that these letters were often rhymed in a spell-like style, as if to imply a bit of magical menace.60 Irish threatening letters, by contrast, were far more supernaturally explicit, teeming with the direst maledictions of the sort contained in a letter sent to a County Limerick landlord in 1886: may you wither up by the fire of hell soon and sudden, may the flesh rot off your bones, and fall away putrid before your eyes, and may the consolation of eternal flames come to be your consolation in your last illness, and the hearthstone of hell be your pillow for ever.61 That missive was pure literary cursing. Dinneen (ed. 507, 554; vol. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. Also: Curse of Cain, Belfast Telegraph, 26 Nov. 1971, 5; 11 Sept. 1972, 3. J. J. M. Vingerhoets, Lauren M. Bylsma and Cornelis de Vlam, Swearing: A Biopsychosocial Perspective, Psychological Topics, xxii (2013). Their blessings and curses often seemed arbitrary and cruel, but they were still upheld as the primary force and source of . In Ulster, the north-eastern province, Presbyterians uttered curses in Scottish accents using the dialect of Ulster-Scots. But this general point also needs qualifying. Your soul go to the Devil might be nullified with my soul from the Devil.53. 1, S816. It had many applications but was particularly valuable to Irelands marginalized people, fighting over food, religion, politics, land and family loyalties. Quoted in: Ignatius Murphy, The Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century (Dublin, 1991), 129. Newry Telegraph, 9 Oct. 1851; Limerick Chronicle, 11 Oct. 1851. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that the ancient Celts, like many other people, believed that the soul did not die with the body. With fearsome curses, needy Irish people did indeed demand food, land, and family and religious loyalty, with some success. Western People, 10 Oct. 1936; First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 543; NFC, Schools Collection: vol. Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland Collected and Arranged by Lady Gregory: With Two Essays and Notes by W. B. Yeats, 2nd ser. Cursing was probably too common and Catholic, and certainly too distasteful and subversive for these amateur scholars, who focused instead on recording what they regarded as rapidly disappearing pagan survivals. This psychologically powerful form of magic was deeply rooted in Irish cosmology, tradition and history. Cursing blended lyrical and ritualistic spell casting with something like prayers to God, Mary, Jesus, the saints (and occasionally the Devil), begging these awesome entities to smite guilty parties. Some unleashed maledictions whilst brushing the dust from their feet, as Christ told his disciples to do when they were shunned.64 Irish cursers of various types fell to their knees, in conspicuously public places like the middle of a road or marketplace.65 With locals watching including, preferably, their victims these cursers beat the floor and looked to the skies, put their hands together and besought God to blight their opponents. There are many famous examples of spells and curses in folklore. The priests curse was rooted in ancient precedents, yet it gained a remarkable new relevance in the fractious but slowly liberalizing world of nineteenth-century Ireland. On a symbolic level too, priests status within the Church enhanced their cursing abilities. Sulis - Mother Goddess, Goddess of Healing Springs. She was considered as a nourishing, life-giving mother goddess and as an effective agent of curses wished by her votaries. So prayed a priest from County Mayo, in 1872, on a woman he accused of spreading tar on his churchs seats.119 He uttered that malediction while standing at the altar, pointing, and followed it up with stories about families who had wasted away and animals that had gone mad, after gaining the priests malediction. Bad cess on you. Publicly, respectable men insisted they did not. These Celtic literary maledictions thus appear closer in style to a third type of Greek and Roman imprecation - other than katadesmoi and conditional curses - one known only from ancient literary sources. NFC, MS 538, 20813; Schools Collection: vol. Gearid hAllmhurin, Flowing Tides: History and Memory in an Irish Soundscape (Oxford, 2016), 67. Like the New Age movement internationally, in Ireland this revival was principally concerned with holistic wellness and spiritual exploration. K. Theodore Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 18321885 (Oxford, 1984), 21213. A publican and farmer from Kilmanaheen, in County Clare, told the commissioners: a woman with child would certainly never refuse relief, meaning that a pregnant woman would not dare risk a beggars curse. Broken Mirror Curse 2. This is striking because, up to about the 1950s, cursing was probably the most valuable magic in a land where all sorts of mystic forces were treated with respect, from Marian apparitions to banshees. Number III of Tracts Published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and Practice in the Kingdom of Ireland (Dublin, 1787); T. C. Barnard, Reforming Irish Manners: The Religious Societies in Dublin during the 1690s, Historical Journal, xxxv (1992), 820. Dublin Daily Express, 20 Mar. Some maledictions, it is true, were fairly general, calling for unspecified punishments. On Sunday 14 January, at the midday Mass at Dunmore chapel, a local priest named Father Loftus imprecated Charles OLoughlin, the Catholic agent of the Conservative candidate, as he sat in his family pew. P. W. Joyce, The Origin and History of Irish Names and Places, 3rd edn (Dublin, 1871), 379; T. ORorke, The History of Sligo: Town and County, ii (Dublin, [1889]), 2578; amonn Tuathail, Mallachta Choluimcille/Coluimcilles Curses, Baloideas, ii (1930); John Begley, The Diocese of Limerick: Ancient and Medieval (Dublin, 1906), 55. May you never prosper. 1890. Writers like W. B. Yeats communed with banshees and fairies, but did little with maledictions except for a few fleeting references and using The Curse of Cromwell as a poem title. To signify this, real cursing used scarier and more complicated wordplay. The time has come for redress. Historic Cowdray, Dublin Daily Express, 22 Aug. 1910. One of the more charmingly bitter traditions of ancient Greece and Rome were "curse tablets"spells written on lead, wax or stone that laid out the ways in which people had been wronged. NFC, MS 548, 242; Schools Collection: vol. Other cursing traditions were more current because they chimed with the needs and conditions of large numbers of people. But cursing songs were not a dying art, part of a vanishing Gaelic folk culture. Catholic priests were well placed to excel at the theatrical art of cursing. In oral stories, collected by folklorists like William and Lady Wilde (Oscars parents) during the nineteenth century, and by the Irish Folklore Commission from the 1930s, imprecators were usually female.128 Local yarns recounted the sufferings of cursing women, bereaved mothers who cried that the caor [lightning] may kill him, against men who betrayed their sons.129 One particularly gruesome tale described a mother enraged by her sons bridal choice, who willed his death by lighting candles round his bed as if a corpse lay there, going down on her knees, praying for his demise.130 Across Ireland, many people knew childish legends about mothers who gave their offspring the choice of a large cake and a curse or a small cake and a blessing.131 More seriously, the commonest malediction stories concerned the dreadful power of the widows curse.132, Like the beggars curse and the priests curse, the widows curse was an old idea that chimed with the conditions of Irish life during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For the imprecators, cursing could be a means of coercion, a cathartic fantasy of their enemies destruction, or merely a way of showing off. These clever formulas were the basis for the unnerving art of real cursing, a scary but widespread occult attack that Irish folk used in their struggles over vital areas of life, from land and food to politics, religion, gender and family disputes. Tutankhamun 2. He talked volubly about dozens of topics, but when curses were broached, Michael went quiet. 1827). Curse Tablets. Catholic mothers curse on killers, Belfast Telegraph, 2 Mar. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 687. II: Containing from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Years of Charles the Second, ad 1665, to the Eleventh Year of Anne, ad 1712, Inclusive (Dublin, 1794), 2578. This was how Catholic priests imprecated grievous sinners, from the altar, with an open Bible or chalice in hand, and candles flickering.63 Beggars shooed away from cottages empty-handed could curse just as ostentatiously. Chief amongst these useful maledictions, during the impoverished early nineteenth century, was the beggars curse. There was another difference, between turn of the twenty-first-century curses and the maledictions of the 1800s. Henry Glassie, Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community (Philadelphia, 1982), 83. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for 19thC Antico 63 Cromata Agata Ancient Celtic Viking Amuleto Contro Draghi at the best online prices at eBay! It began with dress. [Thomas Secker], Against Evil-Speaking, Lying, Rash Vows, Swearing, Cursing, and Perjury. Folklorists in the newly independent Irish Free State began a nationalistic project dedicated to preserving the spirit of Ireland, the traditions of the historic Irish nation.12 Under the direction of figures like Sen Silleabhin, the government-funded Irish Folklore Commission (est. For example: Maureen Flynn, Blasphemy and the Play of Anger in Sixteenth-Century Spain, Past and Present, no. To take a few examples: in 1960 Mary Feehily knelt down on the road to use her widows curse, calling for God to smite her neighbour Patrick Watters, who had berated her during an argument about trespassing animals.140 After an inheritance dispute, Ellie Walsh of Carrick spent the five years between 1957 and 1962 solemnly and publicly cursing her neighbour Harry Walsh, going down on her knees, holding up a crucifix, and praying that the curse of God would come to wipe out Harrys family. May Gods curse and my curse light down on her every day she rises, a mother from Ballybay cried in 1911, on the woman she blamed for spoiling her relationship with her adult son.74 Many maledictions, however, were horribly detailed and gory. By the 1960s American movies and television shows were popular even in remote Gaelic-speaking places like Inis Beag, a windy isle three miles off Irelands north-western coast. In 1969 a member of the Trotskyist civil rights group Peoples Democracy put the curse of Cromwell on three hundred council tenants from Armagh, because they failed to join a protest demonstration outside Armagh City Hall, preferring to organize their own march instead. Concepts like belief, ritual, tradition, symbolism, mentality and discourse undoubtedly illuminate key aspects of historic Irish maledictions. Lindsey Earner-Byrne and Diane Urquhart, Gender Roles in Ireland since 1740, in Biagini and Daly (eds. Yet it is probably safe to assume that, in nineteenth-century Ireland as in the ancient world and elsewhere, special curses existed for attacking penises, breasts, vaginas and arses. It has been said that cursing priests belonged to the primitive, pre-famine era, before modernizing institutions like St Patricks College at Maynooth improved the quality of clerical training.113 This was not so. Margaret Dobbs, On Tin B Flidais, riu, viii (1916), 146; Salvador Ryan, Popular Religion in Gaelic Ireland: 14451645 (National Univ. Plain imprecations were uttered in English: the curse of the poor and helpless cripple upon you every day you put a coat over your back, a beggar on the shores of Lough Patrick was overheard saying, in 1816.91 But beggars usually laid their worst maledictions in Irish Gaelic.92 Biadh an taifrionn gan sholas duit a bhean shalach!, for example, meaning may the Mass never comfort you, you dirty queen!.93. Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, 27982; Conrad M. Arensberg, The Irish Countryman: An Anthropological Study (Gloucester, Mass., 1959), 1978. Ancient Latin Curses 1. Kevin Danaher, Irish Country People (Cork, 1976), 14. A Home Rule candidate John Philip Nolan trounced his unionist opponent, the Conservative William Le Poer Trench, before the result was overturned on appeal. Not until these fires burn, they prayed, will the newcomers do any good. Joan Hoff and Marian Yeates, The Coopers Wife is Missing: The Trials of Bridget Cleary (New York, 2000); Andrew R. Holmes, The Shaping of Ulster Presbyterian Belief and Practice, 17701840 (Oxford, 2006), 89103; Richard Jenkins: Black Magic and Bogeymen: Fear, Rumour and Popular Belief in the North of Ireland, 19721974 (Cork, 2014); Angela Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story (London, 1999); Diarmuid Giollin, Celebrations and the Rituals of Life, in Eugenio F. Biagini and Mary E. Daly (eds. See The Art of Magic and the Power of Faith, in Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (Boston, 1948) and Owen Davies, Magic: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2012), 112. 1967. Something obvious like bad luck to you invited the reply good luck to you, thin; but may neither of them ever happen. Here's our pick of some top ancient Irish curses: 1. May your bones be broken, for example, and a thousand placings of a rope round your neck.41 Irish people said these things during arguments, after accidents, or following near misses. ), Foclir Gaeilge agus Barla (Dublin, 1904), 200. J. M. Synge, The Aran Islands (Dublin, 1907), 1434. ), Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland. There was an irony about priests being pre-eminent cursers. For interpretations of witchcraft as discourse, see: Willem de Blcourt, Keep that woman out! Notions of Space in Twentieth-Century Flemish Witchcraft Discourse, History and Theory, lii (2013), esp. The first comprehensive study of early Celtic cursing, this work analyses both medieval and ancient expressions of Celtic imprecation: from the binding tablets of ancient Britain and Gaul to the saintly maledictions of the early medieval period, and other traces of Celtic . A geis or geas (pl. For victims, it was threatening, disturbing and humiliating. To explain this it is helpful to take an unfashionably functionalist approach, which shows how cursing most persisted when it was useful. [Anon. geasa) is an idiosyncratic taboo, whether of obligation or prohibition, similar to being under a vow or curse, yet the observance of which can also bring power and blessings.It is also used to mean specifically a spell prohibiting some action. 126, 126; vol. Lady Wilde, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland, i, 1325; NFC, Schools Collection: vol. During the Troubles, Ulsters radical politicians invoked and even threw a few curses, with mixed results. May the Almightys curse rest on your children. Druidry in Contemporary Ireland, in Michael F. Strmiska (ed.) When the evicted tenant prayed the widows and orphans curse upon him , Mr Dowd suddenly reneged on his purchase, frankly telling the vendor: Ill have nothing to do with that place I so unwisely bid for. Go. Julian Adelman, Food in Ireland since 1740, in Biagini and Daly (eds. A Scotsman named Patrick Dowd, for example, who in 1901 bought a distressed farm in Sligo. Alexander Macbains An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language (Stirling, 1911) recorded five Scotch Gaelic words for a curse: ainchis, condrachd or contrachd, mallachd and trusdar. Captain Prout [John Levy] (ed. Taking a broad approach like this, and enhancing it through comparisons with maledictions elsewhere, is obviously not the only way to undertake a history of magic. The women of_Irish_ and Celtic mythology are equally loved and feared. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 449, 550, 565, 577, 628, 648. S. M. Hussey, The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, ed. Patrick S. Dinneen (ed. "OLD, LIKE PUTRID GORE". Mchel Briody, The Irish Folklore Commission 19351970: History, Ideology, Methodology (Helsinki, 2016), chs. 95, 1467; vol. Cursing was rife in nineteenth-century Ireland because many people valued it, not only poor peasants and beggars, but priests, parents, and others needful of influence and consolation. (eds. In nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ireland, women usually wore headscarves when outdoors, to keep warm and as nods to strong patriarchal conventions of modesty and respectability. Dublin Weekly Nation, 4 July 1857; Advocate, 17 Feb. 1858. Since the late 1920s it had been involved in the Irish Free States censorship of immoral books, cinema and journalism. Cursing was largely ignored during the late 1800s and early 1900s occult revival in Ireland. 1890; 24 Mar. The Letters of the Most Reverend John Mac Hale, D.D. Its unusual history underlines three wider points: (i) magic can usefully thrive in modern societies, figuring in the most vital areas of life; (ii) different types of magic have distinct chronologies; (iii) the most psychologically powerful forms of magic are subtle arts that deserve our (begrudging) respect. Curses sprung from bitter passions at trying times. Magic & Curses. [Anon. The seancha, accomplished storytellers with vast repositories of local yarns, were dying off and not being replaced.149 Old oral tales of imprecating priests, malediction-throwing beggars, and cursing widows were not told like they had once been. Against a Conservative supporter, Mrs Griffiths, Father Loftus pronounced a Gaelic curse translating as: the curse of the people on her may bad luck fall on everything she touches. ], The Reign of Terror in Carlow, Comprising an Authentic Detail of the Proceedings of Mr. OConnell and His Followers, from the Period of His Invading that County Down to the First of September (London, 1841), 1718. Case studies can be revealing and exciting, as in Angela Bourkes exploration of the 1895 killing of a fairy-ridden Irishwoman, Bridget Cleary, or Ruth Harriss account of collective possession in an Alpine village the Mal de Morzine.16 But I think a broader perspective is more suitable here, because bringing together a wide range of evidence allows us to better appreciate cursings central quality. An inherited disorder that stems from a problem in the way the body handles iron in the blood has been called a "Celtic Curse" because of the condition's high prevalence among people with. 12, 1718, 39. At Tully in County Mayo, farmland owned by Miss Pringle remained unoccupied for at least fifteen years during the 1880s and 1890s, because the old tenant had been evicted. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. It also reminds us that not all types of magic share the same chronology of rise and fall, growth and decline, enchantment and disenchantment. THE MORRGAN. Defeats in football, hurling and even stock market losses were occasionally blamed on old curses.159 More seriously, in the Irish Republic a few people still threw maledictions and credited them with dire powers. As Keith Thomas noted several decades ago, on the neighbouring island of Britain, cursing persisted into the early modern period; but since it sometimes led to witchcraft accusations, presumably the distinction between the righteous magic of cursing and the evil magic of witchcraft was less pronounced than it was in Ireland.77 Throughout the nineteenth century, many British people credited witchcraft and other strange powers. ), Bob Norberry; or, Sketches from the Note Book of an Irish Reporter (Dublin, 1884), 228. Diary kept by the Rev. Occasionally people gave beggars clothes or even shoes but these were not much use because they made mendicants appear wealthier than they were.88 It was better to keep to rags and swap any garments for food or a warming drink. Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 212. 1862. But we should not exaggerate the extent of its decline, or imagine that it disappeared. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, metaphorical curses peppered Irish peoples conversations, jokes, songs and angry outbursts.
