Diodorus Siculus ( 5.28) expands upon this idea, stating that the Celts . At the mid-twentieth century, cursing was not just the province of aged farmers in the Gaeltacht western Ireland, where Gaelic was strongest. 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. She was considered as a nourishing, life-giving mother goddess and as an effective agent of curses wished by her votaries. Ancient Latin Curses 1. 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. 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. But as hordes of desperately needy people left the Irish landscape, promises of beggars blessings and threats of beggars curses stopped being regular occurrences. 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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. Dinneen (ed. He that shall curse him, let him be cursed.101 The Bible also abounded in imprecations with hapless infidels and appalling sinners, smote by the inescapable curses of a wrathful God. II: Containing from the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Years of Charles the Second, ad 1665, to the Eleventh Year of Anne, ad 1712, Inclusive (Dublin, 1794), 2578. These tablets served to curse enemies and other undesirable people, asking the gods to intercede and affect the person in question. Women were central to the struggle, organizing ostracisms and boycotts of land-grabbers, shouting and spitting at bailiffs, throwing stones at policemen, snatching notices and blocking roads to stop evictions (see Plate 2). 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). Christiaan Corlett, Cursing Stones in Ireland, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, lxiv (2012). Hibernias 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.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 parties.6 The idea had important consequences. 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. Cess is from success. Full analysis of ancient and medieval expressions of Celtic cursing, using evidence ranging from magical charms to curse tablets. Kuhling, New Age Movement in the Post-Celtic Tiger Context, 177. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. Paulo Reis Mouro, Determinants of the Number of Catholic Priests to Catholics in Europe: An Economic Explanation, Review of Religious Research, lii (2011). It was simpler, informed more by biblical imagery than oral tradition, yet it did have elements of public performance. College Dublin M.Litt. 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. 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. 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). 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. A Day at Lough Patrick, Christian Examiner and Church of Ireland Magazine, xi (1831), 48. 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. 1890. May the flesh rot off your bones, and fall away putrid before your eyes. Reflecting a remarkable continuity in the history of magic, blacksmiths were known as potent cursers. 573, 383; vol. Ultimately though, cursing was no longer being embedded in youngsters minds. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (Yale, 1990), 423. 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. Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland; Antain Mac Lochlainn, The Famine in Gaelic Tradition, Irish Review, xvii/xviii (1995). I will light a candle that your family will die and you will suffer grief in the next 12 months, he said: when it happens, I will take pictures and send them to you and put them up for everyone to see. Roscommon and Leitrim Gazette, 4 Apr. Did people fear beggars curses? 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. Publicly, respectable men insisted they did not. 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. Following decades of debate, the Corrupt and Illegal Practices Act of 1883 at last outlawed the using of undue spiritual influence during elections, meaning clerical curses.118 Priests still threw imprecations, and many people still credited them. A kneeling woman, perhaps a widow, calls down a curse on the landlords evicting her family. Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, 258. Broken Mirror Curse 2. 2 and 3. Cursing was demanding, sophisticated, formidable and imposing. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. 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. Jonathan Ben-Dov, The Poors Curse: Exodus XXII 2026 and Curse Literature in the Ancient World, Vetus Testamentum, lvi (2006). 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. 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. Some of his respondents made an equivalence between curses and maleficent practices like leaving eggs and dead animals on neighbours farms.166 People no longer distinguished between different types of occult attack. Pg mo thin. The time has come for redress. St Brigids stone, Blacklion Co. Cavan. 465, 83. Patrick Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (London, 1866), 547; Reidar Th. The words for curses and cursing did not really overlap with the vocabulary for witchcraft and piseogs, as evil spells were sometimes called. Some maledictions, it is true, were fairly general, calling for unspecified punishments. Worried its clergy were abusing the terrifying priests curse, Irelands Catholic Church periodically forbade the practice. Hugh Dorian, The Outer Edge of Ulster: A Memoir of Social Life in Nineteenth-Century Donegal, ed. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that the ancient Celts, like many other people, believed that the soul did not die with the body. 1890; 24 Mar. Curses in Ireland come from the usual roots of mythology and include folk magic, charms, and were usually used for nefarious means. 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. 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. Saxon (Bedlington, 1877), 10910. May your bones be broken, for example, and a thousand placings of a rope round your neck.41 Irish people said these things during arguments, after accidents, or following near misses. 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. 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. The Most Rev. 507, 554; vol. Like many early twentieth-century anthropologists, Malinowski was nonetheless rather condescending about the topic. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 687. Amongst their standard questions, the commissioners asked witnesses whether people bestowed charity because of beggars curses. It has been said that cursing priests belonged to the primitive, pre-famine era, before modernizing institutions like St Patricks College at Maynooth improved the quality of clerical training.113 This was not so. 149 (Nov. 1995), 368. Santeria Curses 3. Edward Nangle, The Origin, Progress, and Difficulties of the Achill Mission (Dublin, 1839), 534, 140. 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. 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. May the arm that is now sick, sling dead and powerless by her side before twelve months time. 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. The Boccough, Londonderry Sentinel, 12 Dec. 1835, 1; Niall Ciosin, Ireland in Official Print Culture, 18001850: A New Reading of the Poor Inquiry (Oxford, 2014), 756. Something obvious like bad luck to you invited the reply good luck to you, thin; but may neither of them ever happen. William Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, in Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, 2nd ser., 3 vols. OHiggins, Blasphemy in Irish Law, 156. The first drop of water to quench your thirst may it boil in your bowels. 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 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. 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. THE MORRGAN. [Anon. On the Traditions of the County of Kilkenny, Transactions of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, i (1851), 365. The good versus evil model is simple and was always popular in Irish folk tales. 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. 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. Irish imprecations can be analysed using familiar academic categories such as belief, ritual, symbolism, tradition and discourse. (Dublin, 1834), i, 34950. Curse Tablets. Edward Hirsch, Coming Out into the Light: W. B. Yeatss The Celtic Twilight (1893, 1902), Journal of the Folklore Institute, xviii (1981); Roy Foster, Protestant Magic: W. B. Yeats and the Spell of Irish History, Proceedings of the British Academy, lxxv (1989). Concepts like belief, ritual, tradition, symbolism, mentality and discourse undoubtedly illuminate key aspects of historic Irish maledictions. 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. Following Holy Communion, Father Loftus stood at the altar, holding a chalice. The women of_Irish_ and Celtic mythology are equally loved and feared. To badmouths, they might retort divil choke you. In this contested environment, for the first time perhaps since the Middle Ages, priests curses became political. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. 1. 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. To use sociological parlance, there was a certain amount of path dependency, with Irish imprecators drawing on well-established conventions and precedents, just as people do in other cursing cultures, such as the Okiek of Kenya.79 Yet when Irish folk uttered maledictions, they recreated and renewed certain (not all) cursing techniques. Kiss my butt! 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.) Curse tablets found at Bath appeal to Sulis to punish the perpetrators of the crime. The consequences were catastrophic: the curse didnt fall on the people she give it too but it fell on herself. With the legal system generally trusted to provide fair outcomes, perhaps there was little need for a justice-based supernatural punishment. 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. Bathed in righteous power, steeped in the Holy Spirit, it was obvious that they should possess awesome imprecations. Psychosomatically, it can heal, injure and even kill; intimidate, haunt and terrify; or invigorate, inspire and empower. 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. Kevin Danaher, Irish Country People (Cork, 1976), 14. Cursing was not only an intimidating magical weapon, but also a dark therapy. R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland: 16001972 (1989), 338; K. Theodore Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation: 18461886 (Oxford, 1998), 582. 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. Fairies, leprechauns, banshees, witches, holy wells and rural remedies. Tutankhamun 2. The distinction was important. 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. Home Gordon (London, 1904), 220. Magic is a potent force in the world, not supernaturally but psychologically. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale, 1985), xvixvii. Rituals and a certain style were required to launch maledictions, to give them energy as the antiquary William Carleton put it.62. Evening Herald, 12 Mar. Western People, 4 Mar. That question has a multi-causal answer, which I will build up throughout the rest of this paper. 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. Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the Worlds Great Folk Epics (Bloomington, Ia, 1978), 302. NFC, MS 548, 242; Schools Collection: vol. Vol. In any case, there were fewer reasons for clerics to curse. Trasna ort fin. Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, 3489. 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. However, they had little sense of cursing as a distinct type of moral magic.78. S. M. Hussey, The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, ed. Chief amongst these useful maledictions, during the impoverished early nineteenth century, was the beggars curse. Curses were part of many peoples begging strategies. Also: First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 525, 530, 537. J. J. M. Vingerhoets, Lauren M. Bylsma and Cornelis de Vlam, Swearing: A Biopsychosocial Perspective, Psychological Topics, xxii (2013). Irish Independent, 11 Nov. 2000; Irish Independent, 8 Feb. 2002; Sunday Independent (Dublin), 26 July 1987. Some Protestant claims about cursing priests undoubtedly were. 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. After that, the curse tablets were buried, placed into a well or a pool, or even hung on the wall of a temple. 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. 461, 456; vol. Its unusual history underlines three wider points: (i) magic can usefully thrive in modern societies, figuring in the most vital areas of life; (ii) different types of magic have distinct chronologies; (iii) the most psychologically powerful forms of magic are subtle arts that deserve our (begrudging) respect.
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