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. La Llorona III. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 687. But cursing songs were not a dying art, part of a vanishing Gaelic folk culture. Celtic language. Carefully calibrated to absolutely ruin enemies, real cursing differed in many ways. To explain this it is helpful to take an unfashionably functionalist approach, which shows how cursing most persisted when it was useful. 640, 75. 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. $76.48 4 Used from $78.80 14 New from $76.48. Kerry Evening Post, 19 Sept. 1835; 1 Apr. 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). College Dublin M.Litt. It was used for both cursing and blessing. 1827). Mallacht - Celtic Curses Go n-ithe an cat th is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat. Full analysis of ancient and medieval expressions of Celtic cursing, using evidence ranging from magical charms to curse tablets. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. ), 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. Other cursing traditions were more current because they chimed with the needs and conditions of large numbers of people. (Dublin, 1847), 369. Guardedly, they talked about piseogs, the evil eye (blinking), witchcraft and curses.165 However, those words now meant much the same thing. Curse of the Stolen Cloak A rare Roman-era curse tablet found in England asks that the Celtic god Maglus punish a thief. A Handbook of Irish Pre-Christian Traditions, 2 vols. Irish Times, 18 Feb. 1873; Cork Constitution, 21 Feb. 1873; Warder and Dublin Weekly Mail, 21 Feb. 1874. . May his neck get stiff, they mumbled.44, More serious were musical curses, stinging ballads calling for uncanny retribution. Worried its clergy were abusing the terrifying priests curse, Irelands Catholic Church periodically forbade the practice. On the Traditions of the County of Kilkenny, Transactions of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, i (1851), 365. Geasa are common in Irish and Scottish folklore and mythology, as well as in modern English-language fantasy fiction. Diodorus Siculus ( 5.28) expands upon this idea, stating that the Celts . The distinction was important. (London, 1920), 131. Beggars also needed stories about how they had fallen on hard times. Humorously, he asked: where was the blackguard who canvassed for the Conservatives? That ye may never have a days luck! Between the 1820s and 1860s, Protestant missionaries strove to persuade Irish Catholics to abandon Rome and embrace Reformed faiths. The congregation laughed and even Charles himself chuckled. But as hordes of desperately needy people left the Irish landscape, promises of beggars blessings and threats of beggars curses stopped being regular occurrences. farm in the townland of Coolnagarrane in County Cork. In Northern Ireland, as sectarian violence flared during the dark days of the Troubles, curses were sporadically revived. Irish Folklore: Traditional Beliefs and Superstitions - Owlcation Archbishops of Ireland, as a General Catechism for the Kingdom (Dublin, 1836), 42. 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. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. 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. Curses are declared to be the most dreaded form of magic, often called black magic, and are believed to be universally used. The Celtic languages were a group of closely related languages sharing . the Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, (12 May 1818), PRONI, MS D1375/3/35/15. During the modern era, the currency and style of magic words varied considerably, and over short distances. Southern Reporter and Cork Commercial Courier, 30 Apr. After all, as the old saying goes, "Prevention is better that cure". 11 of the Most Infamous Ancient Curses in History - Oldest.org Saxon (Bedlington, 1877), 10910. To badmouths, they might retort divil choke you. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that the ancient Celts, like many other people, believed that the soul did not die with the body. Here are some prominent curses in history. Henry Glassie, Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community (Philadelphia, 1982), 83. 1890. May you never prosper. 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. Bad cess on you. 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. 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. The emphasis on justice, on curses befalling evildoers, had waned. 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. ), Albions Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (New York, 1975), 303. Western People, 4 Mar. May the arm that is now sick, sling dead and powerless by her side before twelve months time. Not until these fires burn, they prayed, will the newcomers do any good. 3. 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. Hardcover. Celtic curse in the blood - The Irish Times 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. THE MORRGAN. Michael Rooney of Blacklion, for instance, who was interviewed for the Irish Folklore Commission in 1974. 6 Cursed Artifacts That Continue To Haunt Their Owners - TheCollector When Johanna Sullivan was convicted of being drunk outside Corks Theatre Royal, in 1863, she gave the magistrates a mouthful, but the local paper noted only that she uttered a fearful curse.56 Novelists were less inhibited, but as well as being melodramatic and stereotypical, they were unconcerned with literal accuracy. Flower, Western Island or Great Blasket, 49. Curse tablets found at Bath appeal to Sulis to punish the perpetrators of the crime. [Thomas Secker], Against Evil-Speaking, Lying, Rash Vows, Swearing, Cursing, and Perjury. 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. To be intimidating and cathartic, cursing required knowledge, practice, wit, skill and composure. Kiss my butt! 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. Celtic Curses: Mees, Bernard: 9781843834571: Amazon.com: Books Marian Duggan, Queering Conflict: Examining Lesbian and Gay Experiences of Homophobia in Northern Ireland, 1st edn (London, 2012), 53; Fintan OToole, Fire and Brimstone, Magill, ix, 13 Nov. 1985, (accessed March 2019). For example: Mark C. Taylor, Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago, 1998); Christine D. Worobec, Witchcraft Beliefs and Practices in Prerevolutionary Russian and Ukrainian Villages, Russian Review, liv (1995); Sarah Tarlow, Ritual, Belief and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Cambridge, 2011), chs. 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. Those nasty practices had an extensive Gaelic terminology of their own. Eviction Scene, Daniel MacDonald (c.1850). 149 (Nov. 1995), 368. Blessings and curses: Another Celtic tradition that survived long into Christian times was the belief in blessings and curses. Psychosomatically, it can heal, injure and even kill; intimidate, haunt and terrify; or invigorate, inspire and empower. Everybody knew what a beggars curse was: it was a regular and familiar part of life, in pre-famine Ireland. These Celtic literary maledictions thus appear closer in style to a third type of Greek and Roman imprecation - other than katadesmoi and conditional curses - one known only from ancient literary sources. Irish Cursing and the Art of Magic, 1750-2018 - OUP Academic Like most tribal scopes of ancient times, the basic framework of the Celtic society was composed of extended families and clans who were based within their particular territories. ), Foclir Gaeilge agus Barla (Dublin, 1904), 200. 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. CC BY. We know this because of a remarkable ethnographic source: the First Report of the Irish Poor Law Commissioners (1835). May the cold north blast of misery nip your body, while your heart burns like fire. 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. 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. 1835. 12, 1718, 39. Lady Wilde, Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland: Contributions to Irish Lore (London, 1890), 224. However, the main reason priests stopped throwing political maledictions lay elsewhere. 1846; Londonderry Sentinel, 26 Sept. 1835; Statesman and Dublin Christian Record, 31 Mar. 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 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. Minutes of the Evidence Taken at the Trial of the Galway County Election, 211. Overall though, cursing is best conceived of as an art because of the cultivation it required and the strength of the reactions it elicited. 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. Rituals and a certain style were required to launch maledictions, to give them energy as the antiquary William Carleton put it.62. ], Focaloir Gaoidhilge-Sax-Bharla (Paris, 1768). 1973. I would never have spoken of the occurrence at all only that the priest cursed those who knew about it off the altar for not exposing it, a witness admitted.120 Well into the twentieth century, priests threw imprecations at land-grabbers, who rented or purchased estates from whence the previous tenants had been evicted.121 A priests curse was useful in a boycott because it meant that neither the grabber nor his or her customers would prosper. 498, 307; vol. Some Protestant claims about cursing priests undoubtedly were. (London, 1902), i, 310; Dublin Weekly Register, 11 May 1844; Dublin Daily Express, 20 Apr. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 761. Letter from Alexander McNeile, Ballycastle, to the Rt Rev. 460, 294; vol. Following Holy Communion, Father Loftus stood at the altar, holding a chalice. Women in Irish Mythology: Characters & Folklore | Study.com Ancient Roman Curse Tablets Invoke Goddess Sulis Minerva to Kill and They speak to the precariousness of rural life in an age before antibiotics and vaccines, when crops, beasts and people were at great risk from dimly understood threats, when local famines and fever epidemics were almost annual occurrences. Catholic priests were still extraordinarily plentiful, with as many as 1 to every 660 members of the laity in 1950.127 People took their curses seriously; yet priests no longer used them. The good versus evil model is simple and was always popular in Irish folk tales. NFC, MS 548, 242; Schools Collection: vol. 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. Vol. Most provided evasive or cynical replies, saying that only illiterates, fools, servants, children and women took beggars curses seriously.94 Occasionally though, witnesses gave a glimpse of an uncertain superstitious psychology beneath the hard-nosed faade of early nineteenth-century opinion. Christiansen, A Norwegian Fairytale in Ireland?, Baloideas, ii (1930), 238; Pdraig Tuathail, Folk-Tales from Carlow and West Wicklow, Baloideas, vii (1937), 67. It was discovered in 2022 by Paul Shepheard and his wife Joanne during a metal detector rally in Haconby, Lincolnshire. 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. Teresa ODonnell, Skin the Goats Curse on James Carey: Narrating the Story of the Phoenix Park Murders through Contemporary Broadside Ballads, in Kyle Hughes and Donald M. MacRaild (eds. May you leave without returning. Here's our pick of some top ancient Irish curses: 1. 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. The first drop of water to quench your thirst may it boil in your bowels. 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. Sulis - Mother Goddess, Goddess of Healing Springs. 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. 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. Botorrita Plaques, the third plaque is the most extended text discovered in any ancient Celtic language. These campaigns achieved little. K. Theodore Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 18321885 (Oxford, 1984), 21213. For Sale In Britain: A Small Ancient Man With A Colossal Penis The Irish farmer, Donal Bohane, owns a 30-acre (12.1 ha.) Whatever the response, after scenes like these, the neighbours would talk, and not just about your crimes. 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.. The beggars curse did not decline because it was formally disproved. It would have been obvious what the Archbishop of Tuam meant when, in 1835, he wrote to his clergy, instructing them to kindle amongst voters the fear that the curse of the Lord will come on those who elect enemies of religion, meaning opponents of the Catholic Association.105 In the depressed and famine-struck years of the 1840s, reports mushroomed of clerics flaunting their mystic powers during elections. 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. It only worked on people who deserved it: evildoers, killers, cheats, betrayers and so on.34 When we do not deserve the curse we would not heed it; the curse of the wicked never availed, a farmer from County Mayo explained in 1834, when asked about the eerie topic.35 Unjust curses would not just miss their targets. With the legal system generally trusted to provide fair outcomes, perhaps there was little need for a justice-based supernatural punishment. Female tenants joined the Land League (187981), the organization that fought for tenants rights, but were barred from leadership positions and from speaking at public meetings. Curses - The Mystica 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. The first comprehensive study of early Celtic cursing, this work analyses both medieval and ancient expressions of Celtic imprecation: from the binding tablets . archaeologists found a tablet in which a Roman named Silvianus told Nodens, the Celtic God of . 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. 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. Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 212. Gearid Tuathaigh, Languages and Identities, in Biagini and Daly (eds.) William Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, in Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, 2nd ser., 3 vols. 1967. It had many applications but was particularly valuable to Irelands marginalized people, fighting over food, religion, politics, land and family loyalties. Patrick S. Dinneen (ed. Probably cursing was too vicious, humorous and Catholic for it to be translated into the dreamy and non-denominational realm of the Celtic Twilight.157 Cursing experienced none of the post 1970s esoteric revival, either. Irish Independent, 5 Dec. 1919; Freemans Journal, 4 Dec. 1919; Connacht Tribune, 17 Jan. 1920. It was the scariest manifestation of a well-established but increasingly controversial tradition, of sharp-tongued females using fearful words to scold, defame and assert themselves.139 Irish popular culture had long paid special heed to womens voices, in moments of crisis, from the cry of the keening mourner to the wail of the banshee. Stemming from moral indignation, the virtuoso but also shocking technique required knowledge, composure, practice and wit. ), 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). Hardcover. 2 and 3. Mostly though, Irelands cursers were women. See The Art of Magic and the Power of Faith, in Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (Boston, 1948) and Owen Davies, Magic: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2012), 112. Formally, the Church forbade it. You will see within 12 months that your family or someone belonged to you will be dead.162. Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, 348. !.51 But workaday curses were not particularly suitable for proper cursing because they invited easy retorts. Ancient cultures used curses to invoke deities, to bring punishment upon enemies, and to express dissatisfaction with someone or something. 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). As well as publicly uttering maledictions, Irish women used modern means to advertise the dark forces they had unleashed. Source: Wellcome Collection. OHiggins, Blasphemy in Irish Law, 156. John Gamble, Sketches of History, Politics, and Manners, in Dublin, and the North of Ireland, in 1810 (London, 1826), 201. Kuhling, New Age Movement in the Post-Celtic Tiger Context, 177. Curses in Ireland come from the usual roots of mythology and include folk magic, charms, and were usually used for nefarious means. This psychologically powerful form of magic was deeply rooted in Irish cosmology, tradition and history. 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.