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. The heaviest curse at the present, wrote a teacher from the same county in the same year, is Marbhadh Fisg ort the squeeze band of Death on you.145. Scopas Poggo, The Origins and Culture of Blacksmiths in Kuku Society of the Sudan, 17971955, Journal of African Cultural Studies, xviii (2006), 170; Felix J. Oinas, The Balto-Finnic Epics, in Felix J. Oinas (ed.) "May you all go to hell and not have a drop of porter to quench your eternal thirst" For some Irish people, no porter is hell so the two are. 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. 461, 456; vol. On the Traditions of the County of Kilkenny, Transactions of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, i (1851), 365. "OLD, LIKE PUTRID GORE". Women were central to the struggle, organizing ostracisms and boycotts of land-grabbers, shouting and spitting at bailiffs, throwing stones at policemen, snatching notices and blocking roads to stop evictions (see Plate 2). Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, 258. Other cursers stood up high, on rocks above island shores for instance, as policemen and bailiffs sailed away. In 1972 the Reverend Paisley attacked what he called the curse that has blighted twentieth-century Protestantism, this curse of ecumenism.155 Infamously, in the late 1970s and 1980s he and other senior members of the DUP used similar rhetoric to attack another target: if homosexuality were legalized in Ulster, they said, it would bring Gods curse down upon our people.156 The scandalous claim has haunted the DUP ever since; whether it damaged or enhanced their electoral prospects is debatable. 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. Some cursed from the altar, damning and excommunicating the opposition, prohibiting friendly contact, and proclaiming that they walked on earth as accursed beings.106 Others joined campaign trails. The widows curse was on them and their children. ), Albions Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (New York, 1975), 303. 465, 83. 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. 1886. The relationship is revealed in the timing. Edward Nangle, The Origin, Progress, and Difficulties of the Achill Mission (Dublin, 1839), 534, 140. Some Protestant claims about cursing priests undoubtedly were. I would never have spoken of the occurrence at all only that the priest cursed those who knew about it off the altar for not exposing it, a witness admitted.120 Well into the twentieth century, priests threw imprecations at land-grabbers, who rented or purchased estates from whence the previous tenants had been evicted.121 A priests curse was useful in a boycott because it meant that neither the grabber nor his or her customers would prosper. 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. THE MORRGAN. King Tut's Curse (and Other 'Mummy's Curses') The burial mask of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun. May you never die till you see your own funeral, for example an obscure allusion to a hanged man watching the spectators at his execution.54 May she and her friends who in any way caused this marriage, be forever without the grace or favour of God may their offspring unto their latest generation be unhealthy and attended with every misfortune that can befall mankind. Humorously, he asked: where was the blackguard who canvassed for the Conservatives? Cursing was stress busting and cathartic, for two reasons. 212 (Aug. 2011); Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present (Yale, 2018), 246. The beggars curse did not decline because it was formally disproved. John C. Messenger, Inis Beag: Isle of Ireland (Long Grove, Ill., 1983), 11317, 127. 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). Maledictions were uttered across Ireland, North and South, Protestant and Catholic districts, even in towns and cities. Their blessings and curses often seemed arbitrary and cruel, but they were still upheld as the primary force and source of . Occasionally, priests fought back with maledictions, wishing Gods curse on Catholics who worked in or enrolled their children at Protestant schools.109 Any person or persons sending their children to this school henceforth, may they be struck blind and deaf may they be pained both sitting and standing [may] their crops and their goods be taken away by the devil.110 So pronounced a priest from County Clare in 1851, praying for curses to afflict patrons of the new Kiltrellig school. Some maledictions, it is true, were fairly general, calling for unspecified punishments. The first drop of water to quench your thirst may it boil in your bowels. Inspiration for a fuller, more dynamic understanding of cursing, and perhaps other forms of magic too, can be derived from the way that magicians since classical times have imagined the ars magica the art of magic.18 Although pioneering anthropologists like Bronisaw Malinowski acknowledged the art of magic, this understanding of the controversial topic has been forgotten by many recent studies in which, as one not unsympathetic critic puts it: all too often a sense of magic is lost.19. 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. These campaigns achieved little. Marian Duggan, Queering Conflict: Examining Lesbian and Gay Experiences of Homophobia in Northern Ireland, 1st edn (London, 2012), 53; Fintan OToole, Fire and Brimstone, Magill, ix, 13 Nov. 1985, (accessed March 2019). That yeer eyes may fall out of yeer head!! May the flesh rot off your bones, and fall away putrid before your eyes. 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. Hibernia's 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. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 687. Janet K. TeBrake, Irish Peasant Women in Revolt: The Land League Years, Irish Historical Studies, xxviii (1992). Trasna ort fin. Devil take you. Botorrita Plaques, the third plaque is the most extended text discovered in any ancient Celtic language. Druidry in Contemporary Ireland, in Michael F. Strmiska (ed.) (London, 1902), i, 310; Dublin Weekly Register, 11 May 1844; Dublin Daily Express, 20 Apr. They could take the initiative, however, by throwing curses at land-grabbers. Curses were part of many peoples begging strategies. Cormac Grda, Ireland Before and After the Famine: Explorations in Economic History, 18001925 (Manchester, 1993), 17; Mel Cousins, The Irish Parliament and Relief of the Poor: The 1772 Legislation Establishing Houses of Industry, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, xxviii (2013). Curses were written on tablets made of thin pieces of metal that were then folded or rolled. A curse is one or many M agic spells which are placed upon people with the intention of harming them. Historic Ireland is famous for its superstitions, magic and alternative beliefs. Western People, 10 Oct. 1936; First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 543; NFC, Schools Collection: vol. (London, 1920), 131. Curse Dolls 4: Dido's Curse upon Troy IV. 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. The boundary between religion and magic is always porous.102 This distinction is especially problematic for Irish cursing, which was an unusually religious type of magic. Concepts like belief, ritual, tradition, symbolism, mentality and discourse undoubtedly illuminate key aspects of historic Irish maledictions. 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. Witchcraft and piseogs were straightforward malicious magic, designed to visit harm or death on anybody, whether good or evil, innocent or guilty. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that the ancient Celts, like many other people, believed that the soul did not die with the body. (London, 1862), iii, 436. This article looks at the ancient records of the northern nations of Scotland and England and features a selection of the most famous incantations from these magical Celtic Kingdoms where the spoken word and oral traditions were akin to community glue. Love your enemy bless them that curse you, peacemakers counselled.152 But who could blame the bereaved families who wrote to newspapers, telling the world that they had prayed for Gods curse to fall on the murderers, or the clergymen who announced that paramilitary killers bore the curse of Cain?153 This was not the elaborate, artful cursing of generations past, using complex formulas and theatrical rituals to call down gruesome tortures. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. 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. Curse of the Stolen Cloak A rare Roman-era curse tablet found in England asks that the Celtic god Maglus punish a thief. Maria Trotter and Robert De Bruce Trotter, Galloway Gossip Sixty Years Ago: Being A Series of Articles Illustrative of the Manners, Customs, and Peculiarities of the Aboriginal Picts of Galloway, ed. That question has a multi-causal answer, which I will build up throughout the rest of this paper. Though not a witch in the most traditional sense, the Morrgan of Irish mythology's Ulster Cycle bears a name often translated to "Queen of the . 507, 554; vol. Curses have been left out of accounts of Irish land conflict, but there is no doubt that they played an important role. 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. Some of the dwindling number of monoglot Gaelic speakers wondered whether English might be especially suited for firing imprecations.28 Really though, the great cursing language was Irish Gaelic, still spoken by around 40 per cent of people in 1801, when Ireland was incorporated into the United Kingdom, though a century later the figure had fallen to under 15 per cent, with less than 1 per cent speaking Irish Gaelic only.29 Cursing formulas were very common in the Irish language, as the Victorian linguist George Borrow noted.30 Irish also had an abnormally large number of curse words, certainly more than English, and probably more than Scottish Gaelic too.31 Ten Irish Gaelic nouns for a curse were recorded in Bishop John OBriens 1768 dictionary, and thirteen in Edward OReilly and John ODonovans more definitive 1864 compilation, along with numerous verbs for the act of cursing and adjectives to describe accursed people.32 Mallacht was the main Irish term for a curse, but Gaelic speakers had many alternatives. Ancient Roman Curses 1. I. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 449, 550, 565, 577, 628, 648. Some of his respondents made an equivalence between curses and maleficent practices like leaving eggs and dead animals on neighbours farms.166 People no longer distinguished between different types of occult attack. Curses in the Bible 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. With few left to denounce and little scope for throwing political or parish curses, the concept of the priests malediction faded. 1901. That ye may never have a days luck! I did. ], 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. May you leave without returning. May the arm that is now sick, sling dead and powerless by her side before twelve months time. To signify this, real cursing used scarier and more complicated wordplay. 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. 640, 75. My aim is to evoke and analyse a mostly intangible but nonetheless vital culture, which flourished between the late eighteenth and early twentieth centuries, and which still resonates somewhat today. Curses of Caesarea Although they shunned Catholic-sounding imprecations that begged the saints to unleash their holy wrath, Presbyterians were not above letting a curse out, as it was known, using plainer maledictions like Gods curse upon his head and bad luck to her.27 Cursing occurred in English too, which became Irelands dominant language during the eighteenth century. 126, 126; vol. 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. 1967; Connaught Telegraph, 2 Mar. 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. Patrick S. Dinneen (ed. ), 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). Imeacht gan teacht ort. But cursing songs were not a dying art, part of a vanishing Gaelic folk culture. More directly, mendicants insinuated mystic influences by asking for alms for the glory of God, as one Irish beggar did when she met the linguist George Borrow, in the summer of 1854.89 Anyone who agreed, who provided a little charity, would be rewarded with profuse blessings. Nineteenth-century Irish folk possessed a deep oral literacy and a high capacity for verbal sparring. Irish Times, 18 Feb. 1873; Cork Constitution, 21 Feb. 1873; Warder and Dublin Weekly Mail, 21 Feb. 1874. Diary kept by the Rev. Home Gordon (London, 1904), 220. Cursing was demanding, sophisticated, formidable and imposing. 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. 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. Cursing, once understood as a righteous supernatural assault, had been subsumed into the general category of evil magic. 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. Beggars also needed stories about how they had fallen on hard times. 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. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. I do not want to have the widows and orphans curse.138, With curses, Irish women complained, agitated, denounced, denigrated and fought back. Quoted in: Ignatius Murphy, The Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century (Dublin, 1991), 129. 1967. They contained no real viciousness and Irish folk used them only to give force to their speech.49 This was not quite so. College Dublin M.Litt. There was another difference, between turn of the twenty-first-century curses and the maledictions of the 1800s. ), 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. Here's our pick of some top ancient Irish curses: 1. Women and children elicited more sympathy, so husbands generally waited out of view. In this contested environment, for the first time perhaps since the Middle Ages, priests curses became political. Another clerical curse victim was Thomas Mahon, a retired policeman and possible child killer from Carna in County Galway. Michael L. Doherty, The Folklore of Cattle Diseases: A Veterinary Perspective, Baloideas, lxix (2001), 556. 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. Mostly though, Irelands cursers were women. 1935) documented a vast sphere of life, from cooking to clothes, and cursing too.13 Even so, historians have largely followed the narrower agenda of the earlier generations of folklorists, by studying Irelands fairies, banshees, witchcraft, the evil eye, supernatural healing and calendar customs, along with newer oddities like the black magic rumours circulating in 1970s Northern Ireland.14 Irelands curses have been ignored despite the fact that there is a vast academic literature about cursing elsewhere, from ancient lead malediction tablets to imprecations in Anglo-Saxon legal documents to curses in contemporary societies. Kiss my butt! Maybe, too, cursing was weakened by the decline of Catholicism and the idea of a supervisory God, with the weekly church-going rate in the Republic collapsing from 91 per cent in 1973 to 43 per cent in 2008.163 Whatever the case, Irish cursing had not just diminished but changed, losing its previously strong link with morality. A Home Rule candidate John Philip Nolan trounced his unionist opponent, the Conservative William Le Poer Trench, before the result was overturned on appeal. Santeria Curses 3. 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. Julian Adelman, Food in Ireland since 1740, in Biagini and Daly (eds. 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. 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. 573, 383; vol. Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland; Antain Mac Lochlainn, The Famine in Gaelic Tradition, Irish Review, xvii/xviii (1995). yourself! The good versus evil model is simple and was always popular in Irish folk tales. Your soul go to the Devil might be nullified with my soul from the Devil.53. 460, 294; vol. Priests, by definition, were close to God and the saints. In court, the officer explained how it made her feel very uncomfortable, though the defendants promised it was a load of nonsense.161 Even worse was the lurid curse an arrested driver threw at a Garda officer in Ennis in May 2018: I am putting a curse on you. Samus Duilearga, Introductory Note, in Sen Silleabhin, A Handbook of Irish Folklore (Detroit, 1970). In multilingual Ireland, people cursed in many tongues. Nothing was more feared than a really venomous malediction, commentators on Irish manners claimed, without much exaggeration.10 Yet this intriguing form of modern magic remains almost entirely unstudied.11 Antiquarians and folklorists were only marginally interested in it, with the exception of a lively essay by William Carleton (17941869). Instead, the tradition faded with the massive reduction in begging that followed the Great Famine.