By the close of the nineteenth century the masses of Irish beggars who had once stunned travellers were gone, and the beggars curse began to be forgotten.96 A few stories were still told about it.97 Occasionally, people who had fallen on hard times threatened to use it, to elicit a bit of money or food. Minutes of the Evidence Taken at the Trial of the Galway County Election, 211. Other cursing traditions were more current because they chimed with the needs and conditions of large numbers of people. La Llorona III. "OLD, LIKE PUTRID GORE". Here's our pick of some top ancient Irish curses: 1. In 1960, for example, in the little town of Elphin in County Roscommon, Martin OConnor threatened a shopkeeper with the blacksmiths curse during a row about money.83 The blacksmiths curse persisted in Ireland, but at a low level. It was simpler, informed more by biblical imagery than oral tradition, yet it did have elements of public performance. Samus Duilearga, Introductory Note, in Sen Silleabhin, A Handbook of Irish Folklore (Detroit, 1970). S. M. Hussey, The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, ed. If . I. The Irish farmer, Donal Bohane, owns a 30-acre (12.1 ha.) After all, as the old saying goes, "Prevention is better that cure". Historic Ireland is famous for its superstitions, magic and alternative beliefs. Widows were certainly plentiful and needful of power. Full analysis of ancient and medieval expressions of Celtic cursing, using evidence ranging from magical charms to curse tablets. 119, 507. Yet Irish societys patriarchal conventions hampered womens capacity to oppose. Worried its clergy were abusing the terrifying priests curse, Irelands Catholic Church periodically forbade the practice. Roman Curse Tablets 3. She was considered as a nourishing, life-giving mother goddess and as an effective agent of curses wished by her votaries. Celtic curse or "hemochromatosis" is a genetic metabolic disorder that the Celtic Irish descendants have inherited where the blood has excess iron. Kiss my butt! May you live a hundred years, may you pass unhurt through fire and water, may the gates of Paradise be ever open to receive you.90 But if there was still no luck, and they were desperate or frustrated enough, beggars might curse. You will see within 12 months that your family or someone belonged to you will be dead.162. Driver Jailed After Placing Lurid Widows Curse on Garda that Her Family Would Die, Irish Examiner, 8 Jan. 2019,
. 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. A magical art like this deserves neither our condescension nor a staid and lifeless dissection, but our (perhaps begrudging) respect. Kerry Evening Post, 19 Sept. 1835; Niall R. Branach, Edward Nangle & the Achill Island Mission, History Ireland, viii (2000), 358. 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. Instead, the tradition faded with the massive reduction in begging that followed the Great Famine. 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). Some men interviewed by Irish Poor Law Commissioners in the early 1830s admitted this. A Moonlight Curse, Dublin Daily Express, 20 Apr. $76.48 4 Used from $78.80 14 New from $76.48. Mallacht - Celtic Curses Go n-ithe an cat th is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat. Noonans auction house will soon sell a small bronze statue featuring a man holding a large penis in his right hand, in Mayfair, London. Dr James Butlers Catechism, Irelands official statement of Catholic faith, explicitly prohibited cursing for being contrary to the Second Commandment.100 Within Roman Catholicism, however, this simple statement masked considerable ambiguity and inconsistency. It was discovered in 2022 by Paul Shepheard and his wife Joanne during a metal detector rally in Haconby, Lincolnshire. Evening Herald, 12 Mar. Particular thanks to Dr Crostir Mac Crthaigh and Mr Jonny Dillon of the magnificent National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin. Matthew Dutton, The Law of Masters and Servants in Ireland (Dublin, 1723), 11417; [Anon.] At Tully in County Mayo, farmland owned by Miss Pringle remained unoccupied for at least fifteen years during the 1880s and 1890s, because the old tenant had been evicted. Women in Irish Mythology: Characters & Folklore | Study.com Janet K. TeBrake, Irish Peasant Women in Revolt: The Land League Years, Irish Historical Studies, xxviii (1992). [Anon. Some Protestant claims about cursing priests undoubtedly were. Ronald Hutton, Witch-Hunting in Celtic Societies, Past and Present, no. 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 . 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. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that the ancient Celts, like many other people, believed that the soul did not die with the body. 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. A kneeling woman, perhaps a widow, calls down a curse on the landlords evicting her family. Reflecting a remarkable continuity in the history of magic, blacksmiths were known as potent cursers. That question has a multi-causal answer, which I will build up throughout the rest of this paper. Borrow, Wild Wales (1862), iii, 417, 422, 434, 436. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners for Inquiring into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland, with Appendix (A) and Supplement (hereafter First Report from His Majestys Commissioners) (House of Commons, 1835), 496. ], Focaloir Gaoidhilge-Sax-Bharla (Paris, 1768). They, after all, were immersed in the Judeo-Christian cursing tradition, trained in practice of solemn ritual and public prayer, and possessed of sacred objects like chalices, church bibles and vestments. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (Yale, 1990), 423. 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. 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. Had he ever heard about them? After that, the curse tablets were buried, placed into a well or a pool, or even hung on the wall of a temple. 1, S816. Magic & Curses. May the arm that is now sick, sling dead and powerless by her side before twelve months time. Basic maledictions like hells cure to you, the divils luck to you, and high hanging to you were easy to remember and quick to say.50 Sometimes, for real cursing, they were piled on top of each other, as if to multiply their effect. ), Albions Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (New York, 1975), 303. Joan Hoff and Marian Yeates, The Coopers Wife is Missing: The Trials of Bridget Cleary (New York, 2000); Andrew R. Holmes, The Shaping of Ulster Presbyterian Belief and Practice, 17701840 (Oxford, 2006), 89103; Richard Jenkins: Black Magic and Bogeymen: Fear, Rumour and Popular Belief in the North of Ireland, 19721974 (Cork, 2014); Angela Bourke, The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story (London, 1999); Diarmuid Giollin, Celebrations and the Rituals of Life, in Eugenio F. Biagini and Mary E. Daly (eds. 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. Metaphorical maledictions were certainly amusing, impressive and intimidating. ), Foclir Gaeilge agus Barla, 200, 687; Samuel Lover, Legends and Stories of Ireland (Dublin, 1832), 187. The beggars curse did not decline because it was formally disproved. Celtic Curses by Bernard Mees, Hardcover | Barnes & Noble 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. 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. 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. 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. Anthony McIntyre, (18531856), Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (hereafter PRONI), MS D1558/2/3, 120. 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. Christiansen, A Norwegian Fairytale in Ireland?, Baloideas, ii (1930), 238; Pdraig Tuathail, Folk-Tales from Carlow and West Wicklow, Baloideas, vii (1937), 67. But cursing songs were not a dying art, part of a vanishing Gaelic folk culture. That ye may never have a days luck! Paulo Reis Mouro, Determinants of the Number of Catholic Priests to Catholics in Europe: An Economic Explanation, Review of Religious Research, lii (2011). 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. Their blessings and curses often seemed arbitrary and cruel, but they were still upheld as the primary force and source of . Stemming from moral indignation, the virtuoso but also shocking technique required knowledge, composure, practice and wit. May you be accursed in the sight of God, and hated by your fellow man. 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. The widows curse was on them and their children. John Gamble, Sketches of History, Politics, and Manners, in Dublin, and the North of Ireland, in 1810 (London, 1826), 201. Wood-Martin, Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland, ii, 58; Robert MacAdam, Six Hundred Gaelic Proverbs Collected in Ulster (Continued), Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 1st ser., vii (1859), 282. The piece is expected to sell for between 800-1,200 ($1,440). Beggars could not curse lightly, because maledictions levied without just cause were ineffective.87 In a world of canny country folk and official discourses about the undeserving poor, mendicants had to appear genuinely needy to make their curses seem potent. Women and children elicited more sympathy, so husbands generally waited out of view. Not until these fires burn, they prayed, will the newcomers do any good. Western People, 10 Oct. 1936; First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 543; NFC, Schools Collection: vol. When the evicted tenant prayed the widows and orphans curse upon him , Mr Dowd suddenly reneged on his purchase, frankly telling the vendor: Ill have nothing to do with that place I so unwisely bid for. Christiaan Corlett, Cursing Stones in Ireland, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, lxiv (2012). Curse of the Stolen Cloak A rare Roman-era curse tablet found in England asks that the Celtic god Maglus punish a thief. With few left to denounce and little scope for throwing political or parish curses, the concept of the priests malediction faded. 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. 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. The first drop of water to quench your thirst may it boil in your bowels. Every time misfortune struck they would mention your curse, whispering how you had never had any luck since that fateful day. With fearsome curses, needy Irish people did indeed demand food, land, and family and religious loyalty, with some success. Fairies, leprechauns, banshees, witches, holy wells and rural remedies. Roman Catholic Questions: Church of Rome in Ireland, British Critic, v (1829), 1867; Wexford Conservative, 28 Oct. 1835. 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. 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 leave without returning. To make a curse stick, it was best to say something dreadful, complex and difficult to rebut. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. 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? 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. Archaeologists Find Ancient Magic Curse Tablet in Jerusalem In a world where people firmly believed in the existence of gods and goddesses, it is possible that the curse tablets made potential criminals think twice before committing a crime. Archbishops of Ireland, as a General Catechism for the Kingdom (Dublin, 1836), 42. May you fall without rising. 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. Julian Adelman, Food in Ireland since 1740, in Biagini and Daly (eds. Irish cursing was a potent art. 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. [Thomas Secker], Against Evil-Speaking, Lying, Rash Vows, Swearing, Cursing, and Perjury. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 52530, 560, 585. There are ancient stones, called bullaun stones, which were believed to lend power to a blessing or a curse - if the person saying the words was touching a bullaun stone at the time, their words were thought to come . 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. 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. Celtic Curses. Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland; Antain Mac Lochlainn, The Famine in Gaelic Tradition, Irish Review, xvii/xviii (1995). Source: Crawford Art Gallery, Cork. Nineteenth-century Irish folk possessed a deep oral literacy and a high capacity for verbal sparring. 1901. ), 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). These campaigns achieved little. Ancient Roman Curses 1. Ancient Roman Curse Tablets Invoke Goddess Sulis Minerva to Kill and Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, 258. 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. Titim gan ir ort. A geis or geas (pl. 78, 153. 149 (Nov. 1995), 368. In 1939, questioned about mallachta (curses) by a researcher from the Irish Folklore Commission, a farmer from County Mayo reeled off an impressive list of eleven Gaelic maledictions, evoking death and the Devil, failure and blood, as direly poetic as any curses from a hundred years earlier. Other cursers stood up high, on rocks above island shores for instance, as policemen and bailiffs sailed away. 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). The Irish were formidable cursers. 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. 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. Edward Nangle, The Origin, Progress, and Difficulties of the Achill Mission (Dublin, 1839), 534, 140. Partly this was because the church hierarchy was now firmly in control. Cursing was probably too common and Catholic, and certainly too distasteful and subversive for these amateur scholars, who focused instead on recording what they regarded as rapidly disappearing pagan survivals. 11 of the Most Infamous Ancient Curses in History - Oldest.org 461, 456; vol. 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. It was used for both cursing and blessing. Cursing was rife in nineteenth-century Ireland because many people valued it, not only poor peasants and beggars, but priests, parents, and others needful of influence and consolation. Shivas Curse Upon Brahma 4. 498, 307; vol. For victims, it was threatening, disturbing and humiliating. I did. Even so, cursing was not dead. 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. Famous Ancient Curses 1. Ireland's Witchy History: 6 Unforgettable Irish Sorcerers NFC, Schools Collection: vol. Here are some prominent curses in history. The Curse of the Knights Templar II. Priests, by definition, were close to God and the saints. 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. Geasa are common in Irish and Scottish folklore and mythology, as well as in modern English-language fantasy fiction. But we should not exaggerate the extent of its decline, or imagine that it disappeared. Since the late 1920s it had been involved in the Irish Free States censorship of immoral books, cinema and journalism. The art of cursing, on the other hand, is little cultivated. In 1888 Thomas secretly disposed of the dead body of his little daughter, who he had conceived out of wedlock with his cousin and housekeeper. For example: Maureen Flynn, Blasphemy and the Play of Anger in Sixteenth-Century Spain, Past and Present, no. 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. 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. A curse is one or many M agic spells which are placed upon people with the intention of harming them. To badmouths, they might retort divil choke you. 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). During the Troubles, Ulsters radical politicians invoked and even threw a few curses, with mixed results. CC BY. It also reminds us that not all types of magic share the same chronology of rise and fall, growth and decline, enchantment and disenchantment. Yet we should not ignore what was once the most widespread Irish magic of all: cursing. Cess is from success. Visions and Beliefs in the West of Ireland Collected and Arranged by Lady Gregory: With Two Essays and Notes by W. B. Yeats, 2nd ser. Gamble, Sketches of History, Politics, and Manners, in Dublin, and the North of Ireland, 48. Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, 3489. Who were the Celts? - missgien.net 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. No. Psychosomatically, it can heal, injure and even kill; intimidate, haunt and terrify; or invigorate, inspire and empower. ), Crime, Violence, and the Irish in the Nineteenth Century (Liverpool, 2017). Rituals and a certain style were required to launch maledictions, to give them energy as the antiquary William Carleton put it.62. ), 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.