NFC, Schools Collection: vol. 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. 78, 153; MS 42, 203; MS 538, 212. "OLD, LIKE PUTRID GORE". After the Great Famine, survivors wrote songs excoriating the landlords and agents who had evicted starving tenants. Stemming from moral indignation, the virtuoso but also shocking technique required knowledge, composure, practice and wit. 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 . That ye may never have a days luck! 507, 554; vol. 1. In any case, there were fewer reasons for clerics to curse. 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. Curses have been left out of accounts of Irish land conflict, but there is no doubt that they played an important role. Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, 3489. David Nash, Analyzing the History of Religious Crime: Models of Passive and Active Blasphemy since the Medieval Period, Journal of Social History, xli (2007); Paul OHiggins, Blasphemy in Irish Law, Modern Law Review, xxiii (1960), 1556. Some men interviewed by Irish Poor Law Commissioners in the early 1830s admitted this. 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. Adekunle G. Ahmed et al., Developing a Clinical Typology of Dysfunctional Anger, Journal of Affective Disorders, cxxxvi (2012); Amy Hyoeun Lee and Raymond DiGiuseppe, Anger and Aggression Treatments: A Review of Meta-Analyses, Current Opinion in Psychology, xix (2018); Jerry L. Deffenbacher et al., The Driving Anger Expression Inventory: A Measure of How People Express Their Anger on the Road, Behaviour Research and Therapy, xl (2002). Quoted in John D. Brewer with Gareth I. Higgins, Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland, 16001998: The Mote and the Beam (Basingstoke, 1998), 111. Ancient cultures used curses to invoke deities, to bring punishment upon enemies, and to express dissatisfaction with someone or something. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, many people understood the righteous arts finer details. These collective groups, often categorized as Celtic tribes, were ruled by kings or high chieftains, with power sometimes shared by dual authorities. Curses in the Bible 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. Curses in Ireland come from the usual roots, folk magic and charms, mythology, and religion (the good versus evil model is simple and always popular) with famous examples of spell curses in folklore (eg the spell placed on Etain that turned her into various animals or the curse placed on the children of Lir.) 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. A Moonlight Curse, Dublin Daily Express, 20 Apr. Finally, towards the end of the nineteenth century, Irelands priests stopped throwing political curses. William Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, in Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, 2nd ser., 3 vols. 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. Their blessings and curses often seemed arbitrary and cruel, but they were still upheld as the primary force and source of . 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. Captain Prout [John Levy] (ed. Patrick Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (London, 1866), 547; Reidar Th. NFC, MS 548, 242; Schools Collection: vol. Some maledictions, it is true, were fairly general, calling for unspecified punishments. While researchers were analyzing the genes of prehistoric Irish ancestors they discovered that the beginning of a "Celtic Curse" (haemochromatosis) probably arose 4,000 years ago with a wave of migration from the Pontic Steppe to the East. 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. Between the 1820s and 1860s, Protestant missionaries strove to persuade Irish Catholics to abandon Rome and embrace Reformed faiths. 1. Beyond the stock villains of Irish popular culture, their targets included bankers, merchants and police informers.46 James Carey, whose testimony helped convict the men who murdered the government ministers Thomas Henry Burke (182982) and Lord Frederick Cavendish (183682) in Dublins Phoenix Park, was the object of venomous songs wishing that he be afflicted with everything from bedbugs to death.47 For wrongs past and present, the old adversary across the water was also a frequent target: Gods curse on you England, you cruel-hearted monsters.48, Jokey, angry and tuneful curses were mere horseplay, some said. Hardcover. May you leave without returning. 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. This theme has been recorded far and wide, from Western Europe to East Africa, from ancient times to the present.80 In Ireland, stories about imprecating blacksmiths were still current during the 1930s, when the Irish Folklore Commission made the inspired decision to get schoolchildren to record their elders yarns.81 Threatening a curse was the only way some country blacksmiths could get paid, apparently.82 In real life, smiths genuinely mentioned curses during financial confrontations, albeit rarely. Nineteenth-century Irish folk possessed a deep oral literacy and a high capacity for verbal sparring. 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. The Irish farmer, Donal Bohane, owns a 30-acre (12.1 ha.) To make a curse stick, it was best to say something dreadful, complex and difficult to rebut. of Ireland Maynooth Ph.D. thesis, 2002), pt 1, 25, 250, 261, 2767; Lisa M. Bitel, Tools and Scripts for Cursing in Medieval Ireland, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, li/lii (2006/2007); Luke McInerey, A Sixteenth Century Bardic Poem Composed for Sen Mac Conmara, Lord of West Clann Chuilin , Seanchas Ardmhacha, xxiii (2010); Katharine Simms, Guesting and Feasting in Gaelic Ireland, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, cviii (1978). The Bath curse tablets are a collection of about 130 Roman era curse tablets (or defixiones in Latin) discovered in 1979/1980 in the English city of Bath. Catholic mothers curse on killers, Belfast Telegraph, 2 Mar. $76.48 4 Used from $78.80 14 New from $76.48. A righteous occult attack, a dark prayer for terrible pains to blight evildoers, cursing was unnervingly common from ancient times until the mid-twentieth century. 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. 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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. yourself! Other cursers stood up high, on rocks above island shores for instance, as policemen and bailiffs sailed away. The consequences were catastrophic: the curse didnt fall on the people she give it too but it fell on herself. Ian Lynch, a researcher at University College Dublins National Folklore Collection, discovered something similar in 2011, when he sent out questionnaires asking about widows curses. (London, 1902), i, 310; Dublin Weekly Register, 11 May 1844; Dublin Daily Express, 20 Apr. 498, 307; vol. ], Focaloir Gaoidhilge-Sax-Bharla (Paris, 1768). Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the Worlds Great Folk Epics (Bloomington, Ia, 1978), 302. 1862. 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. 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. St Brigids stone, Blacklion Co. Cavan. Yet in Ireland, a proclivity for this dark kind of cursing goes back millennia. Source: Crawford Art Gallery, Cork. In Northern Ireland, as sectarian violence flared during the dark days of the Troubles, curses were sporadically revived. II. The distinction was important. Kevin Danaher, Irish Country People (Cork, 1976), 14. The first drop of water to quench your thirst may it boil in your bowels. The curse was known in Scotland too, and may have been brought to Ireland centuries ago by Presbyterian settlers (though the transmission could have been the other way).147 One of the most baleful curses known in Ulster, the folklorist Jeanne Cooper Foster was stunned to learn that, as late as the 1940s and 1950s, the fire of stones curse was still used.148 It was always levied in connection with evictions, she discovered, with cases occurring in Downpatrick, Bushmills, County Down, and even on Belfasts famously Protestant Shankill Road. 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. [Anon. 119, 507. A Scotsman named Patrick Dowd, for example, who in 1901 bought a distressed farm in Sligo. Roscommon and Leitrim Gazette, 4 Apr. Why then was the righteous art of cursing so heavily cultivated in Ireland, in the commercial and increasingly sophisticated world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? At Ballyloo in 1840, Father Tyrrell went with a hundred men to the house of Patrick Regan, where the priest gave Patrick his curse, saying he would soon see whether he would prosper.107 Their curses would raise storms, sink ships and bring the sickness, imprecating clergymen warned.108, During this conflicted moment, proselytizing also began to inspire clerical maledictions. Your soul go to the Devil might be nullified with my soul from the Devil.53. In Ulster, the north-eastern province, Presbyterians uttered curses in Scottish accents using the dialect of Ulster-Scots. THE MORRGAN. 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. To badmouths, they might retort divil choke you. A solemn curse was uttered with poise and determination, with a hair-raising seriousness seldom found in everyday life. 1846; Ballyshannon Herald, 17 July 1863. OBriens words for curse were aingeis, aoir and airier, ceasacht, cursachadh, easgaine, irre, malsachd, mioscaith and trist. 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. 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. It was finally let in 1901 but the new occupant quickly gave it up after hundreds of local people protested and their leaders warned him that he would go before God with the widows curse.137 In that instance, it is hard to discern what part the curse played, but other cases show that maledictions genuinely did drive out some land-grabbers. Some female beggars wore their hair down, as if to imply that they were already in the cursing pose. Edward OReilly, An Irish-English Dictionary, new edn (Dublin, 1864): acais, airire, anfhocal, aoir, aor, easgaine, inneach, irire, mallachd, moiscaith, oighrir, oirbhir and trist. 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. After all, as the old saying goes, "Prevention is better that cure". Hannes Magerstaedt/Getty Images In February. 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. S. M. Hussey, The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, ed. Metaphorical maledictions were certainly amusing, impressive and intimidating. It must begin with deep history and the cursing traditions I noted earlier. NFC, MS 538, 20813; Schools Collection: vol. A kneeling woman, perhaps a widow, calls down a curse on the landlords evicting her family. 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. Common Brittonic (Welsh: Brythoneg; Cornish: Brythonek; Breton: Predeneg), also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, was a Celtic language spoken in Britain and Brittany.. 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. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 52530, 560, 585. 2 and 5; Michael D. Bailey, The Disenchantment of Magic: Spells, Charms, and Superstition in Early European Witchcraft Literature, American Historical Review, cxi (2006). Archbishops of Ireland, as a General Catechism for the Kingdom (Dublin, 1836), 42. Paulo Reis Mouro, Determinants of the Number of Catholic Priests to Catholics in Europe: An Economic Explanation, Review of Religious Research, lii (2011). 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. Yet cursing did not always work that way. Historic Cowdray, Dublin Daily Express, 22 Aug. 1910. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. 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. Humorously, he asked: where was the blackguard who canvassed for the Conservatives? John Gamble, Sketches of History, Politics, and Manners, in Dublin, and the North of Ireland, in 1810 (London, 1826), 201. Curses had many connotations and Irish people used them to joke, flirt, lament, insult, threaten and rage. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, metaphorical curses peppered Irish peoples conversations, jokes, songs and angry outbursts. Beggars also needed stories about how they had fallen on hard times. Perhaps that was overstating it: some people still knew bloodcurdling tales. Curses are declared to be the most dreaded form of magic, often called black magic, and are believed to be universally used. Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, 3840. Curses of Caesarea Psychosomatically, it can heal, injure and even kill; intimidate, haunt and terrify; or invigorate, inspire and empower. 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. [Thomas Secker], Against Evil-Speaking, Lying, Rash Vows, Swearing, Cursing, and Perjury. 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. Imprecations like: the curse of my orphans, and my falling-sickness [epilepsy], light upon you, which a woman from Athlone pronounced in court, on the people prosecuting her for theft.2 Or: the curse of God and the curse of the flock be upon any men who vote for Higgins, repeatedly bellowed by a priest from County Mayo, during a fractious election campaign.3 Or: may the curse of God alight on you and your family throughout their generations may the curse of Gods thunder and lightning fall heavily, prayed by a farmer from Limerick, on the landlord who had evicted him.4, Those maledictions were uttered between the 1830s and 1850s. 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. However, the main reason priests stopped throwing political maledictions lay elsewhere. Cursing featured heavily in many Irish peoples speech and personal interactions, from day-to-day joshing to terrible pronouncements that were remembered locally for generations. 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. Caesar ( 6.14) states that the druids taught "that souls do not become extinct, but pass after death from one body to another.". Not swearing, turning the air blue with four-letter words, but spoken maledictions for smiting evildoers. Noonans auction house will soon sell a small bronze statue featuring a man holding a large penis in his right hand, in Mayfair, London. Lady Wilde, Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland: Contributions to Irish Lore (London, 1890), 224. dissertation, 2012). It is a form of Insular Celtic, descended from Proto-Celtic, a theorized parent tongue that, by the first half of the first millennium BC, was diverging into separate dialects or languages. 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. Driver Jailed After Placing Lurid Widows Curse on Garda that Her Family Would Die, Irish Examiner, 8 Jan. 2019, . 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. Virginia Crossman, Politics, Pauperism and Power in Late Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Manchester, 2006), 915, 119222; Caitrona Clear, Homelessness, Crime, Punishment and Poor Relief in Galway 18501914: An Introduction, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, l (1998). If . 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. 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. Home Gordon (London, 1904), 220. Since the late 1920s it had been involved in the Irish Free States censorship of immoral books, cinema and journalism. La Llorona III. Women and children elicited more sympathy, so husbands generally waited out of view. 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. Not everyone in Ireland thought curses were legitimate. Titim gan ir ort. 1846; Londonderry Sentinel, 26 Sept. 1835; Statesman and Dublin Christian Record, 31 Mar. In multilingual Ireland, people cursed in many tongues. 461, 456; vol. The beggars curse did not decline because it was formally disproved. Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, 348. Roman Catholic Questions: Church of Rome in Ireland, British Critic, v (1829), 1867; Wexford Conservative, 28 Oct. 1835. Cinema, radio and television all diminished popular knowledge of cursing. Although not really an art, it seems to have nurtured determination and vengeance, amongst people experiencing terrible loss. Vol. In dangerous times, many peoples thinking amounted to a magical version of Pascals wager, where it was best to stay safe, to avoid curses if doing so was not too costly, just in case. That all belonging to ye may die with the hunger!! Gearid hAllmhurin, Flowing Tides: History and Memory in an Irish Soundscape (Oxford, 2016), 67. Rituals and a certain style were required to launch maledictions, to give them energy as the antiquary William Carleton put it.62. Michael knew a woman who threw the widows curse. ), Crime, Violence, and the Irish in the Nineteenth Century (Liverpool, 2017). 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. Cursing was largely ignored during the late 1800s and early 1900s occult revival in Ireland. Chief amongst these useful maledictions, during the impoverished early nineteenth century, was the beggars curse. Curses figured in several of the Churchs ceremonies, including the most severe form of excommunication (the anathema) and some ordination liturgies for nuns and bishops. The time has come for redress. 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. Such was the nasty curse pronounced, in 1829, by a Catholic priest from Tarbert, County Kerry, on discovering that one of his flock was marrying a Protestant.55 Often though, it can be difficult to uncover the exact wording employed by Irelands greatest cursers, because journalists censored horrible maledictions. 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 sources of the curses are: National Folklore Collection at University College Dublin (hereafter NFC), MS 1838, 296. OHiggins, Blasphemy in Irish Law, 156. John C. Messenger, Inis Beag: Isle of Ireland (Long Grove, Ill., 1983), 11317, 127.