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. He talked volubly about dozens of topics, but when curses were broached, Michael went quiet. geasa) is an idiosyncratic taboo, whether of obligation or prohibition, similar to being under a vow or curse, yet the observance of which can also bring power and blessings.It is also used to mean specifically a spell prohibiting some action. Generally though, in Ireland, cursings power was derived from more than mystic phrases alone. Though not a witch in the most traditional sense, the Morrgan of Irish mythology's Ulster Cycle bears a name often translated to "Queen of the . 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. The emphasis on justice, on curses befalling evildoers, had waned. 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). 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. 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. Jeanne Cooper Foster, Ulster Folklore (Belfast, 1951), 1202; Ulster Folklore, in Proceedings and Report of the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society: Session 19431944, 2nd ser., ii (1945), 153; Lynch, Widows Curse, 2836. Carefully calibrated to absolutely ruin enemies, real cursing differed in many ways. Other cursing traditions were more current because they chimed with the needs and conditions of large numbers of people. 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. ), Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland. 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. Concepts like belief, ritual, tradition, symbolism, mentality and discourse undoubtedly illuminate key aspects of historic Irish maledictions. Whatever the response, after scenes like these, the neighbours would talk, and not just about your crimes. $76.48 4 Used from $78.80 14 New from $76.48. Curse tablets found at Bath appeal to Sulis to punish the perpetrators of the crime. The Irish farmer, Donal Bohane, owns a 30-acre (12.1 ha.) Quoted in: Ignatius Murphy, The Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century (Dublin, 1991), 129. Priests, by definition, were close to God and the saints. 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.) A magical art like this deserves neither our condescension nor a staid and lifeless dissection, but our (perhaps begrudging) respect. Borrow, Wild Wales (1862), iii, 417, 422, 434, 436. Irish Cursing and the Art of Magic, 1750-2018 - OUP Academic The beggars curse did not decline because it was formally disproved. This changed with the late nineteenth-century Gaelic revival and particularly after Irelands partition in 1922. Archbishops of Ireland, as a General Catechism for the Kingdom (Dublin, 1836), 42. William Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, in Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, 2nd ser., 3 vols. However, the main reason priests stopped throwing political maledictions lay elsewhere. Your soul go to the Devil might be nullified with my soul from the Devil.53. 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 multilingual Ireland, people cursed in many tongues. Bathed in righteous power, steeped in the Holy Spirit, it was obvious that they should possess awesome imprecations. 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. Tutankhamun 2. To badmouths, they might retort divil choke you. 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. Ruth Harris, Possession on the Borders: The Mal de Morzine in Nineteenth-Century France, Journal of Modern History, lxix (1997); Bourke, Burning of Bridget Cleary. 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. Some men interviewed by Irish Poor Law Commissioners in the early 1830s admitted this. Hannes Magerstaedt/Getty Images In February. Western People, 4 Mar. Bad cess on you. 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 art of cursing, on the other hand, is little cultivated. 498, 307; vol. With these responsibilities, ecclesiastical leaders could no longer permit their priests to use such terrible language. The distinction was important. Catholic Emancipation Petition of the Roman Catholic Bishops of Ireland, Hansard, xvi, col. 796 (2 Mar. Diodorus Siculus ( 5.28) expands upon this idea, stating that the Celts . Their blessings and curses often seemed arbitrary and cruel, but they were still upheld as the primary force and source of . Broken Mirror Curse 2. 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. 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. Mal de Ojo of Mexico 2. 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. To signify this, real cursing used scarier and more complicated wordplay. P. W. Joyce, The Origin and History of Irish Names and Places, 3rd edn (Dublin, 1871), 379; T. ORorke, The History of Sligo: Town and County, ii (Dublin, [1889]), 2578; amonn Tuathail, Mallachta Choluimcille/Coluimcilles Curses, Baloideas, ii (1930); John Begley, The Diocese of Limerick: Ancient and Medieval (Dublin, 1906), 55. Amongst their standard questions, the commissioners asked witnesses whether people bestowed charity because of beggars curses. 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. 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 . Like many early twentieth-century anthropologists, Malinowski was nonetheless rather condescending about the topic. But we should not exaggerate the extent of its decline, or imagine that it disappeared. If potatoes, grain or a few pennies still were not forthcoming, they could begin hinting at more mysterious powers. 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. The curse was known in Scotland too, and may have been brought to Ireland centuries ago by Presbyterian settlers (though the transmission could have been the other way).147 One of the most baleful curses known in Ulster, the folklorist Jeanne Cooper Foster was stunned to learn that, as late as the 1940s and 1950s, the fire of stones curse was still used.148 It was always levied in connection with evictions, she discovered, with cases occurring in Downpatrick, Bushmills, County Down, and even on Belfasts famously Protestant Shankill Road. Maledictions were uttered across Ireland, North and South, Protestant and Catholic districts, even in towns and cities. Santeria Curses 3. In oral stories, collected by folklorists like William and Lady Wilde (Oscars parents) during the nineteenth century, and by the Irish Folklore Commission from the 1930s, imprecators were usually female.128 Local yarns recounted the sufferings of cursing women, bereaved mothers who cried that the caor [lightning] may kill him, against men who betrayed their sons.129 One particularly gruesome tale described a mother enraged by her sons bridal choice, who willed his death by lighting candles round his bed as if a corpse lay there, going down on her knees, praying for his demise.130 Across Ireland, many people knew childish legends about mothers who gave their offspring the choice of a large cake and a curse or a small cake and a blessing.131 More seriously, the commonest malediction stories concerned the dreadful power of the widows curse.132, Like the beggars curse and the priests curse, the widows curse was an old idea that chimed with the conditions of Irish life during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Minutes of the Evidence Taken at the Trial of the Galway County Election, 211. Titim gan ir ort. Catholic mothers curse on killers, Belfast Telegraph, 2 Mar. 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. Whether or not the residents really credited the curse, it was politically counterproductive. Michael Rooney of Blacklion, for instance, who was interviewed for the Irish Folklore Commission in 1974. Irish cursing was a potent art. Rituals and a certain style were required to launch maledictions, to give them energy as the antiquary William Carleton put it.62. 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. 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. Reproduced with permission. Devil take you. 2 and 3. S. M. Hussey, The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, ed. Magic & Curses. 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. 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. Curses were written on tablets made of thin pieces of metal that were then folded or rolled. 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. There was another difference, between turn of the twenty-first-century curses and the maledictions of the 1800s. 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. Andrew Sneddon, Witchcraft and Magic in Ireland (Basingstoke, 2015), 53. 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. Maybe, too, cursing was weakened by the decline of Catholicism and the idea of a supervisory God, with the weekly church-going rate in the Republic collapsing from 91 per cent in 1973 to 43 per cent in 2008.163 Whatever the case, Irish cursing had not just diminished but changed, losing its previously strong link with morality. 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. That ye may never have a days luck! 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. 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. However, it thrived in the modern world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries because it functioned not only as a potent weapon but also as a gruesome therapy and misanthropic coping strategy in fraught times. NFC, MS 538, 20813; Schools Collection: vol. Number III of Tracts Published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and Practice in the Kingdom of Ireland (Dublin, 1787); T. C. Barnard, Reforming Irish Manners: The Religious Societies in Dublin during the 1690s, Historical Journal, xxxv (1992), 820. 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 . Celtic Curses on JSTOR 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. Ronald Hutton, Pagan Britain (Yale, 2013), viiviii. farm in the townland of Coolnagarrane in County Cork. A kneeling woman, perhaps a widow, calls down a curse on the landlords evicting her family. Cursing rapidly faded from the mid-twentieth century and, unlike other forms of occultism, was not revived by the post 1970s New Age movement. May you leave without returning. The same is likely to be true, though perhaps to a lesser degree, of other magical techniques. 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. 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. The Irish were formidable cursers. Every time misfortune struck they would mention your curse, whispering how you had never had any luck since that fateful day. Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, 258. 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. Rev. 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. 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. 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. They contained no real viciousness and Irish folk used them only to give force to their speech.49 This was not quite so. A publican and farmer from Kilmanaheen, in County Clare, told the commissioners: a woman with child would certainly never refuse relief, meaning that a pregnant woman would not dare risk a beggars curse. 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 . Kuhling, New Age Movement in the Post-Celtic Tiger Context, 177. NFC, MS 548, 242; Schools Collection: vol. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 449, 550, 565, 577, 628, 648. Irish Folklore: Traditional Beliefs and Superstitions - Owlcation With few left to denounce and little scope for throwing political or parish curses, the concept of the priests malediction faded. It was simpler, informed more by biblical imagery than oral tradition, yet it did have elements of public performance. Who were the Celts? - missgien.net James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale, 1985), xvixvii. Geasa are common in Irish and Scottish folklore and mythology, as well as in modern English-language fantasy fiction. Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, 3489. ), Albions Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (New York, 1975), 303. Had he ever heard about them? To illustrate: in a classic essay about anonymous threatening letters, sent to English farmers and grain-dealers in the late 1700s and 1800s, E. P. Thompson noticed that these letters were often rhymed in a spell-like style, as if to imply a bit of magical menace.60 Irish threatening letters, by contrast, were far more supernaturally explicit, teeming with the direst maledictions of the sort contained in a letter sent to a County Limerick landlord in 1886: may you wither up by the fire of hell soon and sudden, may the flesh rot off your bones, and fall away putrid before your eyes, and may the consolation of eternal flames come to be your consolation in your last illness, and the hearthstone of hell be your pillow for ever.61 That missive was pure literary cursing. Women in Irish Mythology: Characters & Folklore | Study.com The Most Rev. After lots of stunted answers, the interviewer started pushing and reassuring Michael: just tell us one instance: its all right. 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. 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). A Moonlight Curse, Dublin Daily Express, 20 Apr. Roman Catholic Questions: Church of Rome in Ireland, British Critic, v (1829), 1867; Wexford Conservative, 28 Oct. 1835. Finally, towards the end of the nineteenth century, Irelands priests stopped throwing political curses. 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