The Irish farmer, Donal Bohane, owns a 30-acre (12.1 ha.) In Northern Ireland, as sectarian violence flared during the dark days of the Troubles, curses were sporadically revived. Like many early twentieth-century anthropologists, Malinowski was nonetheless rather condescending about the topic. 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.) Famous Ancient Curses 1. 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. Especially in the North, evictees still used the fire of stones curse.146 Before they were thrown out, tenants would build up piles of stones in every hearth in the house. Privately, amongst their families at home, the reality was different. 19thC Antico 63 Cromata Agata Ancient Celtic Viking Amuleto Contro May the flesh rot off your bones, and fall away putrid before your eyes. 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. 1886. Metaphorical maledictions were certainly amusing, impressive and intimidating. Minutes of the Evidence Taken at the Trial of the Galway County Election, 211. That question has a multi-causal answer, which I will build up throughout the rest of this paper. I did. Everybody knew what a beggars curse was: it was a regular and familiar part of life, in pre-famine Ireland. I do not want to have the widows and orphans curse.138, With curses, Irish women complained, agitated, denounced, denigrated and fought back. Kiss my butt! Hardcover. But we should not exaggerate the extent of its decline, or imagine that it disappeared. 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. Publicly, respectable men insisted they did not. (London, 1862), iii, 436. Celtic Curses on JSTOR Breandn Mac Suibhne and David Dickson (Dublin, 2000), 226. To explain this it is helpful to take an unfashionably functionalist approach, which shows how cursing most persisted when it was useful. The beggars curse did not decline because it was formally disproved. NFC, MS a102, 5862; O. Davies and D. Lowry-Corry, Killinagh Church and Crom Cruaich, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 3rd ser., ii (1939), 103; Isabel R. Crozier and Lily C. Rea, Bullauns and Other Basin-Stones, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 3rd ser., iii (1940), 106; NFC, MS a102, 5860; Sle N Chinnide, A Frenchmans Tour of Connacht in 1791, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, xxxvi (1977/1978); James McParlan, Statistical Survey of the County of Sligo, with Observations on the Means of Improvement (Dublin, 1802), 106. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. This psychologically powerful form of magic was deeply rooted in Irish cosmology, tradition and history. Kerry Evening Post, 19 Sept. 1835; 1 Apr. Amongst their standard questions, the commissioners asked witnesses whether people bestowed charity because of beggars curses. But when they cursed, women literally let their hair down.67 It marked a new if temporary status, their unwillingness to be restrained by ordinary gender norms, and their intention to unleash hidden powers. Curse Dolls 4: Dido's Curse upon Troy IV. Widows were certainly plentiful and needful of power. 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. Curse tablets found at Bath appeal to Sulis to punish the perpetrators of the crime. Irish maledictions can be usefully analysed using familiar academic categories such as belief, ritual, symbolism, mentality, tradition, meaning and discourse.17 Cursing contained all those things: but it was also something fundamentally more lively, active and affecting. A curse is one or many M agic spells which are placed upon people with the intention of harming them. Devil take you. 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. OBriens words for curse were aingeis, aoir and airier, ceasacht, cursachadh, easgaine, irre, malsachd, mioscaith and trist. From an emotional perspective, evicted tenants consoled themselves with the thought that dire supernatural punishments awaited the new occupants. Like cursing African Americans in the early 1900s, Irish cursers revelled in luxuriant fantasies about their enemies being destroyed in specific, irremediable ways, with bones broken, flesh rotted, heads smashed, stomachs exploded, arms withered and eyes blinded.75 Curses expressed peoples deepest anger and most elaborate fantasies, making them a great relief of the heart, as one prolific Irish imprecator put it.76 If you could not stop an eviction, get a tolerable meal, recover your stolen possessions or ensure that your relatives behaved loyally, it was invigorating to imagine that, in time, an artful malediction would wreck the evildoers. Go. He found out and she gave birth to blind and crippled children after the angry cleric muttered Oh God keep her its like she knows how her own children will be yet.125 Elsewhere, people remembered priests pronouncing dreadful curses on smokers who lit up near chapel.126 The tales spoke to lingering anxieties about clerical supervision and supernatural powers. Blessings and curses: Another Celtic tradition that survived long into Christian times was the belief in blessings and curses. John Gamble, Sketches of History, Politics, and Manners, in Dublin, and the North of Ireland, in 1810 (London, 1826), 201. 149 (Nov. 1995), 368. 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. Hexing Cursing and Malediction in Irish Traditions Who were the Celts? - missgien.net John ODonovan, Folk-Lore. Archbishops of Ireland, as a General Catechism for the Kingdom (Dublin, 1836), 42. 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. 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. 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. The most dangerous malediction, Irish commentators and ordinary people agreed, was a priests.98 I mind nothing but the priests curse, one of Lady Anne Dalys tenants told her in 1872, when describing how he could endure any intimidation from his neighbours except that.99. Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, 348. 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. Reproduced with permission. ], Focaloir Gaoidhilge-Sax-Bharla (Paris, 1768). Also: Curse of Cain, Belfast Telegraph, 26 Nov. 1971, 5; 11 Sept. 1972, 3. ), 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). 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. Tutankhamun 2. Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland; Antain Mac Lochlainn, The Famine in Gaelic Tradition, Irish Review, xvii/xviii (1995). 6 Cursed Artifacts That Continue To Haunt Their Owners - TheCollector Historic Ireland is famous for its superstitions, magic and alternative beliefs. 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. 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. Women in Irish Mythology: Characters & Folklore | Study.com That yeer eyes may fall out of yeer head!! 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. Curses had many connotations and Irish people used them to joke, flirt, lament, insult, threaten and rage. Not everyone in Ireland thought curses were legitimate. 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. Exceptions include: Patrick C. Power, The Book of Irish Curses (Aurora, Ill., 1974); Eugene Hynes, Knock: The Virgins Apparition in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Cork, 2008), 4347; Ian Lynch, The Widows Curse: Legend and Belief, Continuity and Change (Univ. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, metaphorical curses peppered Irish peoples conversations, jokes, songs and angry outbursts. May you never prosper. Fairies, leprechauns, banshees, witches, holy wells and rural remedies. The widows curse was on them and their children. The sources of the curses are: National Folklore Collection at University College Dublin (hereafter NFC), MS 1838, 296. Perhaps that was overstating it: some people still knew bloodcurdling tales. 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. Irish Folklore: Traditional Beliefs and Superstitions - Owlcation Finally, towards the end of the nineteenth century, Irelands priests stopped throwing political curses. Whereas metaphorical curses were daily occurrences, real cursing was deeply serious and comparatively rare. ), Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland. After the Great Famine, survivors wrote songs excoriating the landlords and agents who had evicted starving tenants. King Tut's Curse (and Other 'Mummy's Curses') The burial mask of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun. 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. In bilingual or largely English-speaking regions, and in towns and cities, tuneful maledictions were composed in English and sold as printed ballads. May you fade into nothing, like snow in summer. 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. No. the Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, (12 May 1818), PRONI, MS D1375/3/35/15. Curse . May the cold north blast of misery nip your body, while your heart burns like fire. Full analysis of ancient and medieval expressions of Celtic cursing, using evidence ranging from magical charms to curse tablets. 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). 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. Janet K. TeBrake, Irish Peasant Women in Revolt: The Land League Years, Irish Historical Studies, xxviii (1992). Sulis - Mother Goddess, Goddess of Healing Springs. Celtic Curses by Bernard Mees, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble To signify this, real cursing used scarier and more complicated wordplay. 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. Cursing was largely ignored during the late 1800s and early 1900s occult revival in Ireland. They could take the initiative, however, by throwing curses at land-grabbers. Even so, cursing was not dead. E. P. Thompson, The Crime of Anonymity, in Douglas Hay et al. However, it thrived in the modern world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because it functioned not only as a potent weapon but also as a gruesome therapy and misanthropic coping strategy in fraught times. However, by repurposing an older way of thinking about magic, I argue that historic Irish cursing is best understood as an art, because it required knowledge, practice, wit, skill and composure. Julian Adelman, Food in Ireland since 1740, in Biagini and Daly (eds. Locals became very annoyed with Peoples Democracy: they will get no support from us now, one said.154 Ian Paisley, the hard-line leader of Northern Irelands Democratic Unionist Party, had more success when he used the rhetoric of cursing to advertise his partys no surrender politics. In this respect, it was an art. Its adherents revisited and reinterpreted Irelands mystical traditions, particularly its country remedies, ancient myths, magical legends and pagan monuments.158 Needless to say, the historic art of cursing did not chime with this agenda. 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. Women and children elicited more sympathy, so husbands generally waited out of view. 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. Celtic curse in the blood - The Irish Times For Sale In Britain: A Small Ancient Man With A Colossal Penis Magic of the Ancients: Five Incredible Texts of - Ancient Origins 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. Ancient finds (among them long Gaulish curse texts, Celtic Latin Curse tablets found from the Alpine regions to Britain, and fragments . For victims, being cursed could be nerve-shatteringly intimidating. I will light a candle that your family will die and you will suffer grief in the next 12 months, he said: when it happens, I will take pictures and send them to you and put them up for everyone to see. During the modern era, the currency and style of magic words varied considerably, and over short distances. ), Bob Norberry; or, Sketches from the Note Book of an Irish Reporter (Dublin, 1884), 228. 514, 19; vol. Drawing on these sources, this article begins the study of modern Irish cursing. May the cat eat you, and may the devil eat the cat. Magic is a potent force in the world, not supernaturally but psychologically. Southern Reporter and Cork Commercial Courier, 30 Apr. Cursing was demanding, sophisticated, formidable and imposing. May you be stretched out under the gravestone.45 In places like County Clare, on Irelands west coast, they sang in Irish and performed for family and neighbours. 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. The emigration and land consolidation following the Great Famine meant that female farmers (most of whom were widows) made up a growing proportion of tenants, from 4 per cent in 1841, to 15 per cent by 1911.133 Landlords were evicting unprofitable tenants but farmers fought back, particularly during the Land War of 187982, using non-compliance and intimidation. Eviction Scene, Daniel MacDonald (c.1850). Modern Paganism in World Cultures: Comparative Perspectives (Santa Barbara Cal., 2005); Carmen Kuhling, The New Age Movement in the Post-Celtic Tiger Context: Secularisation, Enchantment and Crisis, tudes Irlandaises, xxxix (2014); Richard Jenkins, The Transformations of Biddy Early: From Local Reports of Magical Healing to Globalised New Age Fantasies, Folklore, cxviii (2007); Catherine Maignant, Alternative Pilgrimages: Postmodern Celtic Christianity and the Spatialisation of Time, Nordic Irish Studies, vi (2007); Jenny Butler, 21st Century Irish Paganism: Worldview, Ritual, Identity (Farnham, 2019). Search for other works by this author on: The Past and Present Society, Oxford, 2020, This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs licence (, Astrology, plague, and prognostication in early modern England: A forgotten chapter in the history of public health, Machines in the Hands of Capitalists: Power and Profit in Late Eighteenth-Century Cornish Copper Mines, Doubt and the dislocation of magic: France, 17901940, Writing the Paris Commune in the Warsaw Ghetto, The Cave Mission of 1876 and Britains Imperial Information Strategies, https://magill.ie/archive/fire-and-brimstone, https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/ireland/driver-jailed-after-placing-lurid-widows-curse-on-garda-that-her-family-would-die-896320.html, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/, Receive exclusive offers and updates from Oxford Academic, Copyright 2023 Past and Present Society. John C. Messenger, Inis Beag: Isle of Ireland (Long Grove, Ill., 1983), 11317, 127. For victims, it was threatening, disturbing and humiliating. I Think Im Cursed, Sunday Life, 21 May 1995, 30. With the legal system generally trusted to provide fair outcomes, perhaps there was little need for a justice-based supernatural punishment. Pg mo thin. Instead, the tradition faded with the massive reduction in begging that followed the Great Famine. Parliamentary Elections (Corrupt And Illegal Practices) BillBill 7, Hansard, cclxxx, col. 84293 (18 June 1883). Roscommon and Leitrim Gazette, 4 Apr. A kneeling woman, perhaps a widow, calls down a curse on the landlords evicting her family. 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. 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. yourself! Lynch, Widows Curse, 2836. In Ulster, the north-eastern province, Presbyterians uttered curses in Scottish accents using the dialect of Ulster-Scots. The relationship is revealed in the timing. (Dublin, 1847), 369. Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, 258. Flower, Western Island or Great Blasket, 49. 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. Mchel Briody, The Irish Folklore Commission 19351970: History, Ideology, Methodology (Helsinki, 2016), chs. Cursing was not only an intimidating magical weapon, but also a dark therapy. Magic & Curses. Dr. James Butlers Catechism: Revised, Enlarged, Approved, and Recommended by the Four R.C. S. M. Hussey, The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, ed. A Handbook of Irish Pre-Christian Traditions, 2 vols. 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. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale, 1985), xvixvii. Michael knew a woman who threw the widows curse. 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. 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. II. They would rebound on their casters, unless they quickly cancelled their maledictions with a blessing formula such as agus crosaim th in Gaelic or its English translation: I cross you.36 Proverbs in Gaelic and English reiterated the point: Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.37, Whether uttered in English, Irish or Ulster-Scots, not all maledictions were magical. They contained no real viciousness and Irish folk used them only to give force to their speech.49 This was not quite so. The Lost Charms and Incantations That Molded Celtic Reality Cursing, once understood as a righteous supernatural assault, had been subsumed into the general category of evil magic. The Ars Notoria - An Ancient Magical Book to Perfect Memory and Master Academia As part of a larger collection known as the Lesser Keys of Solomon , the Ars Notoria is a book that is said to allow followers a mastery of academia; giving them greater eloquence, a perfect memory, and wisdom. To illustrate: Irish cursing was closely linked with certain characters, whose identity gave them heightened powers. Stories about cursing priests were told in villages and towns across mid-twentieth-century Ireland, the Irish Folklore Commission discovered.124 In Virginia, County Cavan, locals spoke about a woman who had mocked a rheumatic priests cranky gait. To badmouths, they might retort divil choke you. A magical art like this deserves neither our condescension nor a staid and lifeless dissection, but our (perhaps begrudging) respect. 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 . 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.
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