ancient celtic curses

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. Kerry Evening Post, 19 Sept. 1835; Niall R. Branach, Edward Nangle & the Achill Island Mission, History Ireland, viii (2000), 358. She died in torture, of kidney disease: it come back on herself, back on herself Im telling you she suffered for the curse she gave to other people.151 Michaels trembling words underscore the powerful emotions swirling around this topic. Lady Wilde, Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland: Contributions to Irish Lore (London, 1890), 224. 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. 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. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. Ancient Roman Curses 1. 95, 1467; vol. 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. 1886. 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. 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. Fairies, leprechauns, banshees, witches, holy wells and rural remedies. Some maledictions, it is true, were fairly general, calling for unspecified punishments. 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. 119, 507. dissertation, 2012). It did not always ensure peoples compliance, but it did have other grimly consoling uses, in assuring frustrated people that their pains would be avenged. May the cold north blast of misery nip your body, while your heart burns like fire. To signify this, real cursing used scarier and more complicated wordplay. Yet in Ireland, a proclivity for this dark kind of cursing goes back millennia. 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. It had many applications but was particularly valuable to Irelands marginalized people, fighting over food, religion, politics, land and family loyalties. For example: Maureen Flynn, Blasphemy and the Play of Anger in Sixteenth-Century Spain, Past and Present, no. 625, 258. 3. Think. A Day at Lough Patrick, Christian Examiner and Church of Ireland Magazine, xi (1831), 48. 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. It must begin with deep history and the cursing traditions I noted earlier. The relationship is revealed in the timing. Cursing was not only an intimidating magical weapon, but also a dark therapy. 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. 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. 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. Ronald Hutton, Witch-Hunting in Celtic Societies, Past and Present, no. The tablets were requests for intervention of the goddess Sulis Minerva in the return of stolen goods and to curse the perpetrators of the thefts. Overall though, cursing is best conceived of as an art because of the cultivation it required and the strength of the reactions it elicited. 461, 456; vol. 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. Also: First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 525, 530, 537. The art of cursing, on the other hand, is little cultivated. Something obvious like bad luck to you invited the reply good luck to you, thin; but may neither of them ever happen. 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. 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. May his neck get stiff, they mumbled.44, More serious were musical curses, stinging ballads calling for uncanny retribution. May your limbs wither and the stench of your rotten carcass be too horrible for hungry dogs. 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. Some men interviewed by Irish Poor Law Commissioners in the early 1830s admitted this. The seancha, accomplished storytellers with vast repositories of local yarns, were dying off and not being replaced.149 Old oral tales of imprecating priests, malediction-throwing beggars, and cursing widows were not told like they had once been. 460, 294; vol. If potatoes, grain or a few pennies still were not forthcoming, they could begin hinting at more mysterious powers. Celtic curse or "hemochromatosis" is a genetic metabolic disorder that the Celtic Irish descendants have inherited where the blood has excess iron. 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). Not everyone in Ireland thought curses were legitimate. Patricia Lysaght, Visible Death: Attitudes to the Dying in Ireland, Merveilles & contes, ix (1995), 34; Galway Mercury, 26 Apr. (London, 1902), i, 310; Dublin Weekly Register, 11 May 1844; Dublin Daily Express, 20 Apr. 1973. To illustrate: Irish cursing was closely linked with certain characters, whose identity gave them heightened powers. [Anon. Writers like W. B. Yeats communed with banshees and fairies, but did little with maledictions except for a few fleeting references and using The Curse of Cromwell as a poem title. 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. William Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, in Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, 2nd ser., 3 vols. Even so, cursing was not dead. Flower, Western Island or Great Blasket, 49. 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. (London, 1862), iii, 436. Generally though, in Ireland, cursings power was derived from more than mystic phrases alone. 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. 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. Beggars also needed stories about how they had fallen on hard times. archaeologists found a tablet in which a Roman named Silvianus told Nodens, the Celtic God of . These tablets served to curse enemies and other undesirable people, asking the gods to intercede and affect the person in question. Margaret Dobbs, On Tin B Flidais, riu, viii (1916), 146; Salvador Ryan, Popular Religion in Gaelic Ireland: 14451645 (National Univ. It mattered because curses were believed to be most powerful when their victims remained silent, as if dumbstruck by the lyrical ingenuity of the dreadful utterances.52 By contrast, people who instantly countered with clever replies could turn curses back on their authors. Women and children elicited more sympathy, so husbands generally waited out of view. Humorously, he asked: where was the blackguard who canvassed for the Conservatives? If . Privately, amongst their families at home, the reality was different. $76.48 4 Used from $78.80 14 New from $76.48. 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. Case studies can be revealing and exciting, as in Angela Bourkes exploration of the 1895 killing of a fairy-ridden Irishwoman, Bridget Cleary, or Ruth Harriss account of collective possession in an Alpine village the Mal de Morzine.16 But I think a broader perspective is more suitable here, because bringing together a wide range of evidence allows us to better appreciate cursings central quality. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, many people understood the righteous arts finer details. Their blessings and curses often seemed arbitrary and cruel, but they were still upheld as the primary force and source of . farm in the townland of Coolnagarrane in County Cork. 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. Its adherents revisited and reinterpreted Irelands mystical traditions, particularly its country remedies, ancient myths, magical legends and pagan monuments.158 Needless to say, the historic art of cursing did not chime with this agenda. To explain this it is helpful to take an unfashionably functionalist approach, which shows how cursing most persisted when it was useful. In 1930s County Clare, an American anthropologist discovered that maledictions, if uttered for cause, were credited with the power to ruin prosperous families, break unbelievers necks, and send people blind.144 Stories about lingering curses, uttered on land-grabbers generations ago, were rehearsed when their descendants died in strange circumstances. May the cat eat you, and may the devil eat the cat. Historic Ireland is famous for its superstitions, magic and alternative beliefs. It was simpler, informed more by biblical imagery than oral tradition, yet it did have elements of public performance. 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. Diary kept by the Rev. Statutes Passed in the Parliaments Held in Ireland. Evening Herald, 12 Mar. Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, 348. 1. Tutankhamun 2. 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. College Dublin M.Litt. Here are some prominent curses in history. In an era when we often see anger as dysfunctional, as something needing to be managed, and when many contemporary forms of indignation are indeed horribly crude (think of road rage or abusive outbursts on the Internet), surely it is worth considering the artful ways people expressed and used anger, historically.15 Thankfully, there is no lack of evidence. Fairies, rural remedies, stone circles and holy wells have made a modest comeback, in early twenty-first-century Ireland. Celtic Curses. 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. 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. Whether or not the residents really credited the curse, it was politically counterproductive. 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. 1846; Ballyshannon Herald, 17 July 1863. Keith Thomas, An Anthropology of Religion and Magic, II, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vi (1975), 95. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 449, 550, 565, 577, 628, 648. The first drop of water to quench your thirst may it boil in your bowels. Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, 258. Partly this was because the church hierarchy was now firmly in control. 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. Eviction Scene, Daniel MacDonald (c.1850). 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. Exceptions include: Patrick C. Power, The Book of Irish Curses (Aurora, Ill., 1974); Eugene Hynes, Knock: The Virgins Apparition in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Cork, 2008), 4347; Ian Lynch, The Widows Curse: Legend and Belief, Continuity and Change (Univ. Cormac Grda, Ireland Before and After the Famine: Explorations in Economic History, 18001925 (Manchester, 1993), 17; Mel Cousins, The Irish Parliament and Relief of the Poor: The 1772 Legislation Establishing Houses of Industry, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, xxviii (2013). ), Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (Yale, 1990), 423. Irish maledictions can be usefully analysed using familiar academic categories such as belief, ritual, symbolism, mentality, tradition, meaning and discourse.17 Cursing contained all those things: but it was also something fundamentally more lively, active and affecting. 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. Magic is a potent force in the world, not supernaturally but psychologically. Although the union with Britain was still in place, many of the Catholic movements great causes had been won, from emancipation in 1829, to control over most state-funded schools, and the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1869. 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. During the Troubles, Ulsters radical politicians invoked and even threw a few curses, with mixed results. As Keith Thomas noted several decades ago, on the neighbouring island of Britain, cursing persisted into the early modern period; but since it sometimes led to witchcraft accusations, presumably the distinction between the righteous magic of cursing and the evil magic of witchcraft was less pronounced than it was in Ireland.77 Throughout the nineteenth century, many British people credited witchcraft and other strange powers. Their money would melt in their pockets, apparently.122 During the bloody years of the Irish War of Independence (191921), murderous republicans also felt the force of clerical imprecations, if they killed well-liked local characters.123. Intimidating, cathartic and virtuoso: cursing mingled gruesome yet poetic phrases with ostentatious rites, in the name of supernatural justice. 1967; Connaught Telegraph, 2 Mar. After the Great Famine, survivors wrote songs excoriating the landlords and agents who had evicted starving tenants. King Tut's Curse (and Other 'Mummy's Curses') The burial mask of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun. John J. Marshall, The Dialect of Ulster (Continued), Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 2nd ser., xi (1905), 124; A. Hume, A Dialogue in the Ulster Dialect, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 1st ser., vi (1858), 41; George Francis Savage-Armstrong, Ballads of Down (London, 1901), 334; James Orr, Poems, on Various Subjects (Belfast, 1804), 17, 91, 155; W. Clarke Robinson, Antrim Idylls and Other Poems (Belfast, 1907), 22. The emphasis on justice, on curses befalling evildoers, had waned. K. Theodore Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 18321885 (Oxford, 1984), 21213. 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 in the Bible ), 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). Reproduced with permission. A Moonlight Curse, Dublin Daily Express, 20 Apr. Southern Reporter and Cork Commercial Courier, 30 Apr. Catholic priests were well placed to excel at the theatrical art of cursing. 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. May the arm that is now sick, sling dead and powerless by her side before twelve months time. 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). Full analysis of ancient and medieval expressions of Celtic cursing, using evidence ranging from magical charms to curse tablets. At Ballyloo in 1840, Father Tyrrell went with a hundred men to the house of Patrick Regan, where the priest gave Patrick his curse, saying he would soon see whether he would prosper.107 Their curses would raise storms, sink ships and bring the sickness, imprecating clergymen warned.108, During this conflicted moment, proselytizing also began to inspire clerical maledictions. Not swearing, turning the air blue with four-letter words, but spoken maledictions for smiting evildoers. Minutes of the Evidence Taken at the Trial of the Galway County Election, 211. the Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, (12 May 1818), PRONI, MS D1375/3/35/15. Cursing, once understood as a righteous supernatural assault, had been subsumed into the general category of evil magic. With fearsome curses, needy Irish people did indeed demand food, land, and family and religious loyalty, with some success. Cursing was stress busting and cathartic, for two reasons. The Ars Notoria - An Ancient Magical Book to Perfect Memory and Master Academia As part of a larger collection known as the Lesser Keys of Solomon , the Ars Notoria is a book that is said to allow followers a mastery of academia; giving them greater eloquence, a perfect memory, and wisdom. 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.. Ancient Latin Curses 1. 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). Another clerical curse victim was Thomas Mahon, a retired policeman and possible child killer from Carna in County Galway. (Dublin, 1834), i, 34950. With these responsibilities, ecclesiastical leaders could no longer permit their priests to use such terrible language. May the Almightys curse rest on your children. Irish Times, 18 Feb. 1873; Cork Constitution, 21 Feb. 1873; Warder and Dublin Weekly Mail, 21 Feb. 1874. 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 Kiss my butt! 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. 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. A magical art like this deserves neither our condescension nor a staid and lifeless dissection, but our (perhaps begrudging) respect. Diodorus Siculus ( 5.28) expands upon this idea, stating that the Celts . 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. Cursing continued to be rife during the period of the Enlightenment, throughout the 1800s, and until about the mid-twentieth century. The Irish farmer, Donal Bohane, owns a 30-acre (12.1 ha.) A curse is one or many M agic spells which are placed upon people with the intention of harming them. Every time misfortune struck they would mention your curse, whispering how you had never had any luck since that fateful day. Curse Tablets. After all, as the old saying goes, "Prevention is better that cure". Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland; Antain Mac Lochlainn, The Famine in Gaelic Tradition, Irish Review, xvii/xviii (1995). It was terrifyingly brutal, mustering dark feelings that marked people who had seen or maybe just heard about the events in question. Catholic mothers curse on killers, Belfast Telegraph, 2 Mar. John Gamble, Sketches of History, Politics, and Manners, in Dublin, and the North of Ireland, in 1810 (London, 1826), 201. Sean OFallon, Irish Curses, Northern Junket, xi (n.d.), 28. May you fade into nothing, like snow in summer. !.51 But workaday curses were not particularly suitable for proper cursing because they invited easy retorts. Shivas Curse Upon Brahma 4. Dinneen (ed. The decline was partially compensated for by the increasing popularity of folklore books and pamphlets, where malediction stories were told and racy curses listed. For instance, in ancient Greece around the 5th century BC, artifacts called "Tablets of Curse" could be made. George Borrow, Wild Wales: Its People, Language, and Scenery, 3 vols. Although not really an art, it seems to have nurtured determination and vengeance, amongst people experiencing terrible loss. (Dublin, 1847), 369.

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