A kneeling woman, perhaps a widow, calls down a curse on the landlords evicting her family. Breandn Mac Suibhne and David Dickson (Dublin, 2000), 226. Sulis - Mother Goddess, Goddess of Healing Springs. May his neck get stiff, they mumbled.44, More serious were musical curses, stinging ballads calling for uncanny retribution. George Lewis, The Bible, the Missal, and the Breviary: or, Ritualism Self-Illustrated in the Liturgical Books of Rome, i (Edinburgh, 1853), 232, 242, 2601. Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the Worlds Great Folk Epics (Bloomington, Ia, 1978), 302. In November 1996, Ellen tried to stab the woman she held responsible for uttering it.160 In January 2010 a Donegal Garda had a gypsys curse put on her, by the occupants of an uninsured car. Michael Rooney of Blacklion, for instance, who was interviewed for the Irish Folklore Commission in 1974. Western People, 10 Oct. 1936; First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 543; NFC, Schools Collection: vol. To explain this it is helpful to take an unfashionably functionalist approach, which shows how cursing most persisted when it was useful. 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. In this dangerous environment, it was best to be cautious. Christiaan Corlett, Cursing Stones in Ireland, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, lxiv (2012). Curses in Ireland come from the usual roots of mythology and include folk magic, charms, and were usually used for nefarious means. For Sale In Britain: A Small Ancient Man With A Colossal Penis It was discovered in 2022 by Paul Shepheard and his wife Joanne during a metal detector rally in Haconby, Lincolnshire. Pg mo thin. Edward Nangle, The Origin, Progress, and Difficulties of the Achill Mission (Dublin, 1839), 534, 140. the Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, (12 May 1818), PRONI, MS D1375/3/35/15. Recognizing this challenges us to reconsider our wider ideas about the history of magic. 95, 112. 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. Devil take you. 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. Following Holy Communion, Father Loftus stood at the altar, holding a chalice. There was an irony about priests being pre-eminent cursers. Nor was it employed exclusively by the weak and powerless. Patrick Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (London, 1866), 547; Reidar Th. Some of the dwindling number of monoglot Gaelic speakers wondered whether English might be especially suited for firing imprecations.28 Really though, the great cursing language was Irish Gaelic, still spoken by around 40 per cent of people in 1801, when Ireland was incorporated into the United Kingdom, though a century later the figure had fallen to under 15 per cent, with less than 1 per cent speaking Irish Gaelic only.29 Cursing formulas were very common in the Irish language, as the Victorian linguist George Borrow noted.30 Irish also had an abnormally large number of curse words, certainly more than English, and probably more than Scottish Gaelic too.31 Ten Irish Gaelic nouns for a curse were recorded in Bishop John OBriens 1768 dictionary, and thirteen in Edward OReilly and John ODonovans more definitive 1864 compilation, along with numerous verbs for the act of cursing and adjectives to describe accursed people.32 Mallacht was the main Irish term for a curse, but Gaelic speakers had many alternatives. Psychosomatically, it can heal, injure and even kill; intimidate, haunt and terrify; or invigorate, inspire and empower. 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. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. W. B. Cannon, Voodoo Death, American Anthropologist, xliv (1942); Esther M. Sternberg, Walter B. Cannon and Voodoo Death: A Perspective from 60 Years On, American Journal of Public Health, xcii (2002); Martin A. Samuels, Voodoo Death Revisited: The Modern Lessons of Neurocardiology, Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine, lxxiv (2007), suppl. Curses are declared to be the most dreaded form of magic, often called black magic, and are believed to be universally used. Celtic Curses: Mees, Bernard: 9781843834571: Amazon.com: Books 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. Newry Telegraph, 9 Oct. 1851; Limerick Chronicle, 11 Oct. 1851. 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 beggars curse did not decline because it was formally disproved. There was another difference, between turn of the twenty-first-century curses and the maledictions of the 1800s. Also: First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 525, 530, 537. 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. Celtic Curses on JSTOR (Dublin, 1834), i, 34950. Known as the Celtic Curse, haemochromatosis is a genetic disorder seen mainly in people of Celtic origin which causes those affected by it to absorb excessive amounts of iron into the blood. Ancient Roman Curse Tablets Invoke Goddess Sulis Minerva to Kill and Ellen Collins of Ballina, for instance, who thought a curse killed her mother, made her child disabled and gave her depression. The congregation laughed and even Charles himself chuckled. 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. Guardedly, they talked about piseogs, the evil eye (blinking), witchcraft and curses.165 However, those words now meant much the same thing. 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. Go. Dite agus loisceadh ort. Eviction Scene, Daniel MacDonald (c.1850). "May you all go to hell and not have a drop of porter to quench your eternal thirst" For some Irish people, no porter is hell so the two are. During the modern era, the currency and style of magic words varied considerably, and over short distances. Nineteenth-century Irish folk possessed a deep oral literacy and a high capacity for verbal sparring. Irish imprecations can be analysed using familiar academic categories such as belief, ritual, symbolism, tradition and discourse. 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 . Here's our pick of some top ancient Irish curses: 1. (Dublin, 1847), 369. Archbishops of Ireland, as a General Catechism for the Kingdom (Dublin, 1836), 42. Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, 3489. 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. Vol. 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. 5 Like in other loosely Celtic societies, in pre-modern Ireland cursing was regarded as a legitimate activity, a form of supernatural justice that only afflicted guilty After that, the curse tablets were buried, placed into a well or a pool, or even hung on the wall of a temple. Broken Mirror Curse 2. 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. It began with dress. Sulis was a deity worshiped at the thermal spring of Bath. The same is likely to be true, though perhaps to a lesser degree, of other magical techniques. 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. OFallon, Irish Curses, 32; Robin Flower, The Western Island or Great Blasket ([1944] Oxford, 1979), 49. 1. Here are some prominent curses in history. This may explain why, despite growing anxieties amongst Irish elites about the unruly conduct of verbally abusive females, Irish women continued to curse until the era of the Second World War and beyond. 9 Timeless Ancient Curses To Use Against Your Enemies - Ranker 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. Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, 348. Beggars also needed stories about how they had fallen on hard times. That all belonging to ye may die with the hunger!! S. M. Hussey, The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, ed. Nobody on the estate backed a winner yesterday, an informant later told the Belfast Telegraph. ), 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. John C. Messenger, Inis Beag: Isle of Ireland (Long Grove, Ill., 1983), 11317, 127. Santeria Curses 3. But this general point also needs qualifying. Cuchulain in Battle" by Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874 - 1951) shows the famous Irish warrior flanked by a crow, often thought to be a manifestation of the Morrgan or badh. 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. Common Brittonic - Wikipedia 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. Other cursing traditions were more current because they chimed with the needs and conditions of large numbers of people. 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 Moonlight Curse, Dublin Daily Express, 20 Apr. 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. Curses - The Mystica May the Almightys curse rest on your children. 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. Curses of Caesarea Like the New Age movement internationally, in Ireland this revival was principally concerned with holistic wellness and spiritual exploration. 7 Ancient Roman Curses You Can Work into Modern Life Sean OFallon, Irish Curses, Northern Junket, xi (n.d.), 28. E. P. Thompson, The Crime of Anonymity, in Douglas Hay et al. Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 212. 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. 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. These clever formulas were the basis for the unnerving art of real cursing, a scary but widespread occult attack that Irish folk used in their struggles over vital areas of life, from land and food to politics, religion, gender and family disputes. Gearid hAllmhurin, Flowing Tides: History and Memory in an Irish Soundscape (Oxford, 2016), 67. 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. 461, 456; vol. In 1972 the Reverend Paisley attacked what he called the curse that has blighted twentieth-century Protestantism, this curse of ecumenism.155 Infamously, in the late 1970s and 1980s he and other senior members of the DUP used similar rhetoric to attack another target: if homosexuality were legalized in Ulster, they said, it would bring Gods curse down upon our people.156 The scandalous claim has haunted the DUP ever since; whether it damaged or enhanced their electoral prospects is debatable.