After that, the curse tablets were buried, placed into a well or a pool, or even hung on the wall of a temple. Occasionally people gave beggars clothes or even shoes but these were not much use because they made mendicants appear wealthier than they were.88 It was better to keep to rags and swap any garments for food or a warming drink. 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. Some of the more inventive could be used in our 21st-century livesjust swap out the Roman names and use your imagination to get dark magic to do your bidding. 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. 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. For example: Maureen Flynn, Blasphemy and the Play of Anger in Sixteenth-Century Spain, Past and Present, no. Like many early twentieth-century anthropologists, Malinowski was nonetheless rather condescending about the topic. 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. 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. The Letters of the Most Reverend John Mac Hale, D.D. 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. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that the ancient Celts, like many other people, believed that the soul did not die with the body. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 449, 550, 565, 577, 628, 648. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. 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. 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. Recognizing this challenges us to reconsider our wider ideas about the history of magic. They contained no real viciousness and Irish folk used them only to give force to their speech.49 This was not quite so. 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. OBriens words for curse were aingeis, aoir and airier, ceasacht, cursachadh, easgaine, irre, malsachd, mioscaith and trist. 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. Like the New Age movement internationally, in Ireland this revival was principally concerned with holistic wellness and spiritual exploration. This psychologically powerful form of magic was deeply rooted in Irish cosmology, tradition and history. Privately, amongst their families at home, the reality was different. 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. 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 . The devil go with you and sixpence, an thin youll want neither money nor company, was a mock malediction men used to tease women.38 Bad scran to you, meaning poor food, was a jokey curse suitable for needling either sex; and surely a poignant one, given that for much of the nineteenth century most peoples diet was restricted to potatoes, buttermilk, an occasional smattering of fish and maybe some wild greens.39 Bad luck to your own soul for the head-ache you gave me yesterday, with laughing at your old stories, and drinking your new wine, was the kind of cheeky curse friends uttered, with a wink, to their drinking buddies in Dublins alehouses.40, Beyond the jokes were half-serious maledictions, simple utterances for releasing quick bursts of anger. Overall though, cursing is best conceived of as an art because of the cultivation it required and the strength of the reactions it elicited. Keith Thomas, An Anthropology of Religion and Magic, II, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vi (1975), 95. 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 stipulation and binding only speculated on in earlier scholarship. Researchers Reveal How a Celtic Curse Fell Upon the Ancient Irish 4000 Cursing, once understood as a righteous supernatural assault, had been subsumed into the general category of evil magic. Curses sprung from bitter passions at trying times. Other cursing traditions were more current because they chimed with the needs and conditions of large numbers of people. Celtic Curses by Bernard Mees, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble Celtic Curses - Boydell and Brewer Archbishops of Ireland, as a General Catechism for the Kingdom (Dublin, 1836), 42. Nor was it employed exclusively by the weak and powerless. A Day at Lough Patrick, Christian Examiner and Church of Ireland Magazine, xi (1831), 48. 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. Partly this was because the church hierarchy was now firmly in control. There are many famous examples of spells and curses in folklore. 126, 126; vol. That yeer eyes may fall out of yeer head!! Kerry Evening Post, 19 Sept. 1835; Niall R. Branach, Edward Nangle & the Achill Island Mission, History Ireland, viii (2000), 358. To lay foundations for a locally funded but nationally organized system of poor relief, commissioners traversed Ireland, gathering evidence about poverty from rich and poor, Protestants and Catholics, men and (much less) women. 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. 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. Irish Cursing and the Art of Magic, 1750-2018 - OUP Academic Full analysis of ancient and medieval expressions of Celtic cursing, using evidence ranging from magical charms to curse tablets. II. Thomas Waters, Irish Cursing and the Art of Magic, 17502018, Past & Present, Volume 247, Issue 1, May 2020, Pages 113149, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz051. The Lost Charms and Incantations That Molded Celtic Reality The Irish were formidable cursers. For Sale In Britain: A Small Ancient Man With A Colossal Penis 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. The distinction was important. Kerry Evening Post, 19 Sept. 1835; 1 Apr. George Borrow, Wild Wales: Its People, Language, and Scenery, 3 vols. 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. The good versus evil model is simple and was always popular in Irish folk tales. 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. Copy of the Minutes of the Evidence Taken at the Trial of the Galway County Election Petition (1872), pt 1 (House of Commons, 1872), 173. 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. Particular thanks to Dr Crostir Mac Crthaigh and Mr Jonny Dillon of the magnificent National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin. Curses have been left out of accounts of Irish land conflict, but there is no doubt that they played an important role. 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. 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. For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription. 2 and 3. Defeats in football, hurling and even stock market losses were occasionally blamed on old curses.159 More seriously, in the Irish Republic a few people still threw maledictions and credited them with dire powers. 1. ), Foclir Gaeilge agus Barla, 200, 687; Samuel Lover, Legends and Stories of Ireland (Dublin, 1832), 187. The Curse of the Knights Templar II. Ireland's Witchy History: 6 Unforgettable Irish Sorcerers Yet though their utterers may have been unconscious of it, non-literal curses were also vital preparation for the high art of real cursing. farm in the townland of Coolnagarrane in County Cork. Jonathan Ben-Dov, The Poors Curse: Exodus XXII 2026 and Curse Literature in the Ancient World, Vetus Testamentum, lvi (2006). 3. But even if the threat of a malediction did not shape someones behaviour in the way you had hoped, the evil prayer still had value. The congregation laughed and even Charles himself chuckled. Irish cursing persisted partly because of its value, use and functions. Every time misfortune struck they would mention your curse, whispering how you had never had any luck since that fateful day. Best Irish curses to hex your enemy - IrishCentral.com The Most Rev. Reproduced with permission. 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. 1, S816. 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. Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 212. Lady Wilde, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland, i (Boston, 1887), 191. 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. Like rulers elsewhere, early modern Irelands politicians and senior churchmen repeatedly tried to quash the foul habit, as part of a general attack upon ungodly speech, which in turn fed into a wider civilizing mission that historians have termed the reformation of manners.20 The Oaths Act of 1635 was ineffective so more strenuous efforts were made in 1695, when Irelands parliament again outlawed both profane swearing and cursing those two detestable sins. 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. In fact, there is good reason to think that the power of cursing clerics actually grew, in the wake of the famine.114 Their ratio was rapidly increasing, from roughly one priest per three thousand laity in 1840, to approximately 1 per 1,500 in 1870, and still growing.115 Priests could now realistically monitor their parishioners and, if they misbehaved, pronounce personalized imprecations.116 Good evidence of this powerful combination was generated by the disputed Galway by-election of 1872. To illustrate: Irish cursing was closely linked with certain characters, whose identity gave them heightened powers. 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. 6 Famous Curses and Their Origins - HISTORY Following Southern Irelands independence in 1922, crime in the Irish Free State and Irish Republic fell precipitously, partly because huge numbers of deviants and dissenters were shunted off to asylums and church homes. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 52530, 560, 585. The Confessions of an Apostate, Meath People, 23 Oct. 1858. Ancient Irish inherited Celtic curse from Russia - Silicon Republic On Sunday 14 January, at the midday Mass at Dunmore chapel, a local priest named Father Loftus imprecated Charles OLoughlin, the Catholic agent of the Conservative candidate, as he sat in his family pew. Intimidating, cathartic and virtuoso: cursing mingled gruesome yet poetic phrases with ostentatious rites, in the name of supernatural justice. Curse of the Stolen Cloak A rare Roman-era curse tablet found in England asks that the Celtic god Maglus punish a thief. Patrick Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (London, 1866), 547; Reidar Th. 573, 383; vol. In this contested environment, for the first time perhaps since the Middle Ages, priests curses became political. Everybody knew what a beggars curse was: it was a regular and familiar part of life, in pre-famine Ireland. May you leave without returning. 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. You will see within 12 months that your family or someone belonged to you will be dead.162. Beggars also needed stories about how they had fallen on hard times. 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. 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. Sulis - Mother Goddess, Goddess of Healing Springs - Celtic Goddess Kiss my butt! 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. La Llorona III. NFC, MS 548, 242; Schools Collection: vol. After lots of stunted answers, the interviewer started pushing and reassuring Michael: just tell us one instance: its all right. It is tempting to classify it as one of the weapons of the weak that have been most sensitively studied by the sociologist James C. Scott those everyday forms of resistance that subordinated individuals use to subtly check authority and limit powerful peoples claims upon food, rents, taxes and labour.167 To fit Irish cursing precisely into this schema would not, however, be entirely correct. A Moonlight Curse, Dublin Daily Express, 20 Apr. 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. Mallacht - Celtic Curses Go n-ithe an cat th is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat. Paulo Reis Mouro, Determinants of the Number of Catholic Priests to Catholics in Europe: An Economic Explanation, Review of Religious Research, lii (2011). Hugh Dorian, The Outer Edge of Ulster: A Memoir of Social Life in Nineteenth-Century Donegal, ed. Carefully calibrated to absolutely ruin enemies, real cursing differed in many ways. Julian Adelman, Food in Ireland since 1740, in Biagini and Daly (eds. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. In this dangerous environment, it was best to be cautious. Ultimately though, cursing was no longer being embedded in youngsters minds. 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. 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 curse or "hemochromatosis" is a genetic metabolic disorder that the Celtic Irish descendants have inherited where the blood has excess iron. Corinne A. Kratz, Genres of Power: A Comparative Analysis of Okiek Blessings, Curses and Oaths, Man, new ser., xxiv (1989). Irish cursing was a potent art. So prayed a priest from County Mayo, in 1872, on a woman he accused of spreading tar on his churchs seats.119 He uttered that malediction while standing at the altar, pointing, and followed it up with stories about families who had wasted away and animals that had gone mad, after gaining the priests malediction. Lindsey Earner-Byrne and Diane Urquhart, Gender Roles in Ireland since 1740, in Biagini and Daly (eds. 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. Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the Worlds Great Folk Epics (Bloomington, Ia, 1978), 302. 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. People who believed they were cursed occasionally wrote to newspaper agony aunts, describing themselves as being under an evil power, as if curses were identical with black witchcraft.164 Likewise, in the 1990s and early 2000s countryside, in places like County Limerick and County Tipperary and even rural Ulster, there were still farmers and veterinarians who had seen strange things and experienced weird agricultural misfortunes. Curses were thrown at Protestant evangelists and their converts too, with notable victims being the Reverend Edward Nangle (180083) and his mission on the island of Achill.111 Their tongues would fall out, local Catholics were warned, if they failed to bellow abuse at the heretics.112. Something obvious like bad luck to you invited the reply good luck to you, thin; but may neither of them ever happen. 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. ], Focaloir Gaoidhilge-Sax-Bharla (Paris, 1768). 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. 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. 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. 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). Mostly though, Irelands cursers were women. Hexing Cursing and Malediction in Irish Traditions 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. Diary kept by the Rev. Humorously, he asked: where was the blackguard who canvassed for the Conservatives? Some men interviewed by Irish Poor Law Commissioners in the early 1830s admitted this. The time has come for redress. 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. Ronald Hutton, Pagan Britain (Yale, 2013), viiviii. Home Gordon (London, 1904), 220. 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.
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