Cursing rapidly faded from the mid-twentieth century and, unlike other forms of occultism, was not revived by the post 1970s New Age movement. Source: Wellcome Collection. Ancient Latin Curses 1. To illustrate: Irish cursing was closely linked with certain characters, whose identity gave them heightened powers. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 449, 550, 565, 577, 628, 648. 1846; Londonderry Sentinel, 26 Sept. 1835; Statesman and Dublin Christian Record, 31 Mar. Irish Independent, 11 Nov. 2000; Irish Independent, 8 Feb. 2002; Sunday Independent (Dublin), 26 July 1987. 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. Ultimately though, cursing was no longer being embedded in youngsters minds. 119, 507. To be intimidating and cathartic, cursing required knowledge, practice, wit, skill and composure. ), Foclir Gaeilge agus Barla, 200, 687; Samuel Lover, Legends and Stories of Ireland (Dublin, 1832), 187. Curse . Priests, by definition, were close to God and the saints. R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland: 16001972 (1989), 338; K. Theodore Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation: 18461886 (Oxford, 1998), 582. Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the Worlds Great Folk Epics (Bloomington, Ia, 1978), 302. Edward Hirsch, Coming Out into the Light: W. B. Yeatss The Celtic Twilight (1893, 1902), Journal of the Folklore Institute, xviii (1981); Roy Foster, Protestant Magic: W. B. Yeats and the Spell of Irish History, Proceedings of the British Academy, lxxv (1989). Even so, cursing was not dead. 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 piece is expected to sell for between 800-1,200 ($1,440). (Dublin, 1834), i, 34950. A magical art like this deserves neither our condescension nor a staid and lifeless dissection, but our (perhaps begrudging) respect. Concepts like belief, ritual, tradition, symbolism, mentality and discourse undoubtedly illuminate key aspects of historic Irish maledictions. Michael L. Doherty, The Folklore of Cattle Diseases: A Veterinary Perspective, Baloideas, lxix (2001), 556. Some Protestant claims about cursing priests undoubtedly were. Douglas Hyde, Beside the Fire: A Collection of Irish Gaelic Folk Stories (London, 1890), 187; P. W. Joyce, English as We Speak It in Ireland, 2nd edn (London, 1910), 38. 573, 383; vol. As well as publicly uttering maledictions, Irish women used modern means to advertise the dark forces they had unleashed. Western People, 10 Oct. 1936; First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 543; NFC, Schools Collection: vol. Imeacht gan teacht ort. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 761. Nineteenth-century Irish folk possessed a deep oral literacy and a high capacity for verbal sparring. 2 and 3. Following Holy Communion, Father Loftus stood at the altar, holding a chalice. 78, 153. THE MORRGAN. She died in torture, of kidney disease: it come back on herself, back on herself Im telling you she suffered for the curse she gave to other people.151 Michaels trembling words underscore the powerful emotions swirling around this topic. 212 (Aug. 2011); Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present (Yale, 2018), 246. Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland; Antain Mac Lochlainn, The Famine in Gaelic Tradition, Irish Review, xvii/xviii (1995). Hibernias ancient lords and chieftains were notorious cursers, as were the saints who converted the Emerald Isle to Christianity, medieval Irish churchmen, and the Gaelic bards.5 Like in other loosely Celtic societies, in pre-modern Ireland cursing was regarded as a legitimate activity, a form of supernatural justice that only afflicted guilty parties.6 The idea had important consequences. Ruth Harris, Possession on the Borders: The Mal de Morzine in Nineteenth-Century France, Journal of Modern History, lxix (1997); Bourke, Burning of Bridget Cleary. Edward OReilly, An Irish-English Dictionary, new edn (Dublin, 1864): acais, airire, anfhocal, aoir, aor, easgaine, inneach, irire, mallachd, moiscaith, oighrir, oirbhir and trist. Cursing, with its traditional resonances, was a powerful tool for conventionally demure women to loudly and forcefully object.143, Cursing dwindled, in Ireland, as its major uses disappeared and the networks that transmitted knowledge about it atrophied. 1901. May you fade into nothing, like snow in summer. The first drop of water to quench your thirst may it boil in your bowels. It would have been obvious what the Archbishop of Tuam meant when, in 1835, he wrote to his clergy, instructing them to kindle amongst voters the fear that the curse of the Lord will come on those who elect enemies of religion, meaning opponents of the Catholic Association.105 In the depressed and famine-struck years of the 1840s, reports mushroomed of clerics flaunting their mystic powers during elections. Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, 348. At the mid-twentieth century, cursing was not just the province of aged farmers in the Gaeltacht western Ireland, where Gaelic was strongest. The history of Irish cursing underlines how mystic forces and supernatural powers can resonate incredibly strongly in modern societies, if they chime with peoples struggles and are indulged by complacent authorities. Magic is a potent force in the world, not supernaturally but psychologically. Here's our pick of some top ancient Irish curses: 1. Fionnuala Carson Williams, A Fire of Stones Curse, Folk Life, xxxv (1996/1997); Fionnuala Carson Williams, A Fire of Stones Curse Rekindled, Folk Life, xlii (2003). [Anon. 1. 95, 112. OHiggins, Blasphemy in Irish Law, 156. There was an irony about priests being pre-eminent cursers. "OLD, LIKE PUTRID GORE". Druidry in Contemporary Ireland, in Michael F. Strmiska (ed.) ), 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. Their money would melt in their pockets, apparently.122 During the bloody years of the Irish War of Independence (191921), murderous republicans also felt the force of clerical imprecations, if they killed well-liked local characters.123. 1973. The tablets were requests for intervention of the goddess Sulis Minerva in the return of stolen goods and to curse the perpetrators of the thefts. $76.60 - $78.80 4 Used from $78.80 14 New from $76.60. 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. ), Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland. Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, 27982; Conrad M. Arensberg, The Irish Countryman: An Anthropological Study (Gloucester, Mass., 1959), 1978. Calamitous historical events were memorialized in maledictions, notably Oliver Cromwells brutal 1649 conquest of Ireland, which spawned the Curse of Cromwell, a fearsome imprecation supposed to bring death and destruction.8 In villages and towns nationwide, place names and oral stories told how ancient curses had created local lakes, rivers, mountains and hills.9. It provides the first full overview and analyses of the ancient Celtic use of binding curses (as attested in Old Celtic and Latin inscriptions) and examines their mooted influence in later medieval expressions. May every thing that could give comfort in affliction be a days march before you, whilst sorrow, multiplied sorrow, be your daily companion, the Irish writer John Levy made one of his characters, an old widow, pray on her landlord.57 Neither novelists nor journalists mentioned sexual maledictions. Full analysis of ancient and medieval expressions of Celtic cursing, using evidence ranging from magical charms to curse tablets. Bathed in righteous power, steeped in the Holy Spirit, it was obvious that they should possess awesome imprecations. 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. Another clerical curse victim was Thomas Mahon, a retired policeman and possible child killer from Carna in County Galway. May your limbs wither and the stench of your rotten carcass be too horrible for hungry dogs. John C. Messenger, Inis Beag: Isle of Ireland (Long Grove, Ill., 1983), 11317, 127. 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. It was terrifyingly brutal, mustering dark feelings that marked people who had seen or maybe just heard about the events in question. In 1786, for example, Munsters Catholic bishops announced their determination to sanction clerics who habitually poured forth from the altar the most shocking curses and imprecations.23. It was discovered in 2022 by Paul Shepheard and his wife Joanne during a metal detector rally in Haconby, Lincolnshire. John Gamble, Sketches of History, Politics, and Manners, in Dublin, and the North of Ireland, in 1810 (London, 1826), 201. It may help to explain why, during the early modern period, Ireland experienced no witch craze, with just a handful of trials, compared with almost four thousand across the water in Scotland (mostly involving people from lowland and non-Gaelic regions).7 Along with taking some stigma out of interpersonal supernatural conflict, cursing influenced how Irish people saw the world. (London, 1920), 131. Inevitably, it left traces on a wide range of literary material, from Gaelic dictionaries to local newspapers, government reports, travellers writings, letters, novels, legal documents, memoirs, diaries and religious tracts. Now, though, the main targets were sinful, antisocial parishioners. If we want to appreciate how magic can move people in these ways, we need to better appreciate how accomplished, skilful and imposing it is. Statutes Passed in the Parliaments Held in Ireland. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, many people understood the righteous arts finer details. 1845; Derry Journal, 15 Jan. 1839; W. G. Wood-Martin, Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland: A Folklore Sketch. First, it was an outlet for boiling anger, doubtless engaging what clinical psychologists call the neurological rage circuit even more powerfully than conventional swearing did.73 Second, and rather luridly, cursing articulated intricate revenge fantasies. Celtic language. To boatmen who sailed over their nets, fisherman spat out all sorts of imprecations, both profuse Gaelic maledictions and simpler curses in English, the writer J. M. Synge observed while sailing between the Aran Islands in Galway Bay.42 Interfering clerics, who habitually visited paupers, sometimes found their souls cursed to the hottest and lowest regions of hell, as happened to the Reverend Anthony McIntyre of Belfast in 1854.43 Policemen, too, were damned in this way, like a constable who during the Great Famine of 184555 stopped a hungry Ulster crowd from taking shipwrecked grain. If . Maledictions were uttered across Ireland, North and South, Protestant and Catholic districts, even in towns and cities. Gearid Tuathaigh, Languages and Identities, in Biagini and Daly (eds.) The same is likely to be true, though perhaps to a lesser degree, of other magical techniques. Cuchulain in Battle" by Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874 - 1951) shows the famous Irish warrior flanked by a crow, often thought to be a manifestation of the Morrgan or badh. Carefully calibrated to absolutely ruin enemies, real cursing differed in many ways. It also reminds us that not all types of magic share the same chronology of rise and fall, growth and decline, enchantment and disenchantment. He would have got away with it, had not the local priest heard rumours and put his malediction on anyone who did not report what they knew to the police. 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. Kiss my butt! With outstretched arms and windswept hair, they roared maledictions using magnificent words and gestures that were totally uncharacteristic of their usually reticent temperament.66 Flowing hair, incidentally, was important. Broken Mirror Curse 2. The emphasis on justice, on curses befalling evildoers, had waned. 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. Historic Ireland is famous for its superstitions, magic and alternative beliefs. 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. E. P. Thompson, The Crime of Anonymity, in Douglas Hay et al. Curses were part of many peoples begging strategies. Shivas Curse Upon Brahma 4. Gearid hAllmhurin, Flowing Tides: History and Memory in an Irish Soundscape (Oxford, 2016), 67. Pg mo thin. Reflecting a remarkable continuity in the history of magic, blacksmiths were known as potent cursers. 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. Some maledictions, it is true, were fairly general, calling for unspecified punishments. 1967; Connaught Telegraph, 2 Mar. 5 Like in other loosely Celtic societies, in pre-modern Ireland cursing was regarded as a legitimate activity, a form of supernatural justice that only afflicted guilty Trasna ort fin. Curse Tablets. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. Tutankhamun 2. 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. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that the ancient Celts, like many other people, believed that the soul did not die with the body. ], Focaloir Gaoidhilge-Sax-Bharla (Paris, 1768). In bilingual or largely English-speaking regions, and in towns and cities, tuneful maledictions were composed in English and sold as printed ballads. May the cold north blast of misery nip your body, while your heart burns like fire. 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. Witchcraft and piseogs were straightforward malicious magic, designed to visit harm or death on anybody, whether good or evil, innocent or guilty. May the arm that is now sick, sling dead and powerless by her side before twelve months time. With fearsome curses, needy Irish people did indeed demand food, land, and family and religious loyalty, with some success. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. Curses in Ireland come from the usual roots of mythology and include folk magic, charms, and were usually used for nefarious means. After that, the curse tablets were buried, placed into a well or a pool, or even hung on the wall of a temple. Dr. James Butlers Catechism: Revised, Enlarged, Approved, and Recommended by the Four R.C. Cursed Irish Farmer Calls in The Druids Read Later Print A Cork farmer has employed the services of druids to end his decade of bad luck after a bull damaged an ancient standing stone on his land. Those land-grabbers never had a bit of luck. St Brigids stone, Blacklion Co. Cavan. Whatever the response, after scenes like these, the neighbours would talk, and not just about your crimes. Their greatest impact was at places like Doughmakeon and Oughaval in County Mayo, where during the early nineteenth century galvanized clergymen cleared their parishes of ancient cursing stones, destroying or burying unusual rocks that had long been used to lay powerful maledictions.24 A good number of these sinister monuments remained, however, including the bed of St Columbkille, a hillside rock near Carrickmore village, which was still being used to lay curses during the 1880s, as well as cursing stones on the island of Inishmurray in Sligo Bay and St Brigids stones near Blacklion in County Cavan (see Plate 1).25 The anti-cursing laws were sporadically employed and supplemented by the Town Police Clauses Act of 1847 and the Towns Improvement Act of 1854, both of which forbade profane language.26 But cursing was too deeply embedded in everyday life for crackdowns based on vague legislation to be effective. 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. Ancient Roman Curses 1. Curses sprung from bitter passions at trying times. Roman Catholic Questions: Church of Rome in Ireland, British Critic, v (1829), 1867; Wexford Conservative, 28 Oct. 1835. Hannes Magerstaedt/Getty Images In February. The Boccough, Londonderry Sentinel, 12 Dec. 1835, 1; Niall Ciosin, Ireland in Official Print Culture, 18001850: A New Reading of the Poor Inquiry (Oxford, 2014), 756. (Dublin, 1847), 369. English newspapers portrayed them as slow, stupid drunks; yet Irelands workers possessed finely honed curses for every occasion, every fit of passion.58 Their lyrical formulas were designed to awaken God to injustice, alert the Devil to sin, and generally unsettle supernatural forces. Here are some prominent curses in history. When they knelt in the street to curse, crying out to the Almighty and all who would listen, like a poor woman from County Kerry recalled in one early twentieth-century memoir, it would have been hard to know how to react.70 Some victims unconvincingly mocked their imprecators, saying they did not care about their curse any more than their blessing.71 Others walked off, shaking, or maintained what they imagined was a dignified silence. To use sociological parlance, there was a certain amount of path dependency, with Irish imprecators drawing on well-established conventions and precedents, just as people do in other cursing cultures, such as the Okiek of Kenya.79 Yet when Irish folk uttered maledictions, they recreated and renewed certain (not all) cursing techniques. 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. 1890. Andrew Sneddon, Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland (Basingstoke, 2015), 53. ), Foclir Gaeilge agus Barla (Dublin, 1904), 200. He that shall curse him, let him be cursed.101 The Bible also abounded in imprecations with hapless infidels and appalling sinners, smote by the inescapable curses of a wrathful God. Saxon (Bedlington, 1877), 10910. Folklorists interviewees, such as Patrick Feeney of Gurrane of Ballyhea in County Cork, said that the generations growing up from the 1960s knew little of maledictions.150. In 1888, a shopkeeper from Mitchelstown who had purchased a house from the Countess of Kingstons estate was warned by notices posted around the town: let her be aware of the widows curse.134. In an era when we often see anger as dysfunctional, as something needing to be managed, and when many contemporary forms of indignation are indeed horribly crude (think of road rage or abusive outbursts on the Internet), surely it is worth considering the artful ways people expressed and used anger, historically.15 Thankfully, there is no lack of evidence. Some men interviewed by Irish Poor Law Commissioners in the early 1830s admitted this. Blessings and curses: Another Celtic tradition that survived long into Christian times was the belief in blessings and curses. Patrick S. Dinneen (ed. Julian Adelman, Food in Ireland since 1740, in Biagini and Daly (eds. Yet we should not ignore what was once the most widespread Irish magic of all: cursing. A geis or geas (pl. Curse Dolls 4: Dido's Curse upon Troy IV. Irish cursing persisted partly because of its value, use and functions. A Home Rule candidate John Philip Nolan trounced his unionist opponent, the Conservative William Le Poer Trench, before the result was overturned on appeal. Anthony McIntyre, (18531856), Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (hereafter PRONI), MS D1558/2/3, 120. 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. Source: Crawford Art Gallery, Cork. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (Yale, 1990), 423. They formed a sharp edge of the Catholic Association, a mass movement founded by the barrister Daniel OConnell to campaign against anti-Catholic discrimination and for the repeal of Irelands union with Britain. They expressed fear, loathing, hate and yearning for pitiless vengeance, for punishments exceeding anything one could mete out physically. It had many applications but was particularly valuable to Irelands marginalized people, fighting over food, religion, politics, land and family loyalties. However, the main reason priests stopped throwing political maledictions lay elsewhere. Stereotypically male though in reality mostly female, beggars included people as various as migratory farm labourers, temporarily workless families asking their neighbours for assistance, tinkers or travellers an increasingly distinct ethnic group, and professional itinerants known as boccoughs or bull-beggars.86. But the atmosphere darkened when the priest said anyone voting for Captain Trench would die bearing the mark of Cain, as would their children.117 Next Father Loftus pronounced a Gaelic malediction that Charles could not understand, but which affected the Irish-speaking majority so much that they instinctively touched their chests, in horror. Chief amongst these useful maledictions, during the impoverished early nineteenth century, was the beggars curse. With the legal system generally trusted to provide fair outcomes, perhaps there was little need for a justice-based supernatural punishment. Newry Telegraph, 9 Oct. 1851; Limerick Chronicle, 11 Oct. 1851. 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. After all, as the old saying goes, "Prevention is better that cure". This had various causes: emigration, population decline, the near disappearance of the precarious peasant class, the increased availability of official poverty relief, and new laws criminalizing wandering begging. Until quite recently, it was not unusual for historians to suggest that only early man and pre-modern Europeans credited words with magical qualities.59 Clearly that is wrong: languages metaphysical power is an enduring theme in the history of magic, whether ancient or modern. Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 212. The bayonet of the British soldier will protect him, admitted a speaker at a meeting of the Callan Tenant Protection Society in 1847, but the widows curse will meet him on the threshold and wither him.135 Literary stories about Irish life contained a trope about an abandoned cottage, left unoccupied since the previous occupant uttered her widows curse.136 In the real world, loosely similar events took place. ), Magical Folk: British and Irish Fairies 500 ad to the Present (London, 2018); Andrew Sneddon and John Fulton, Witchcraft, the Press and Crime in Ireland, 18221922, Historical Journal, lxii (2019). 1827). 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 .
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