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Curses of Caesarea Like the New Age movement internationally, in Ireland this revival was principally concerned with holistic wellness and spiritual exploration. 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. Hardcover. (London, 1920), 131. On Sunday 14 January, at the midday Mass at Dunmore chapel, a local priest named Father Loftus imprecated Charles OLoughlin, the Catholic agent of the Conservative candidate, as he sat in his family pew. 78, 153. Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the Worlds Great Folk Epics (Bloomington, Ia, 1978), 302. 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. Saxon (Bedlington, 1877), 10910. But as hordes of desperately needy people left the Irish landscape, promises of beggars blessings and threats of beggars curses stopped being regular occurrences. Also: First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 525, 530, 537. 212 (Aug. 2011); Ronald Hutton, The Witch: A History of Fear, from Ancient Times to the Present (Yale, 2018), 246. Some Protestant claims about cursing priests undoubtedly were. 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. 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. 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. Your soul go to the Devil might be nullified with my soul from the Devil.53. George Borrow, Wild Wales: Its People, Language, and Scenery, 3 vols. Magic & Curses. 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. 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. It is time we acknowledged the polish and power of the art of magic. THE MORRGAN. 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 . A solemn curse was uttered with poise and determination, with a hair-raising seriousness seldom found in everyday life. 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. Every time misfortune struck they would mention your curse, whispering how you had never had any luck since that fateful day. 1. From an emotional perspective, evicted tenants consoled themselves with the thought that dire supernatural punishments awaited the new occupants. 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. 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. Ultimately though, cursing was no longer being embedded in youngsters minds. 1846; Ballyshannon Herald, 17 July 1863. Their blessings and curses often seemed arbitrary and cruel, but they were still upheld as the primary force and source of . ), Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland. 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.) The Bath curse tablets are a collection of about 130 Roman era curse tablets (or defixiones in Latin) discovered in 1979/1980 in the English city of Bath. Flower, Western Island or Great Blasket, 49. 498, 307; vol. Curse Tablets. 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. Irish Times, 18 Feb. 1873; Cork Constitution, 21 Feb. 1873; Warder and Dublin Weekly Mail, 21 Feb. 1874. This article explores its neglected modern history, since the late 1700s, by carefully scrutinizing the Irish style of cursing, relating it to wider social and economic conditions, and making comparisons with maledictions elsewhere. Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, 3840. Quoted in John D. Brewer with Gareth I. Higgins, Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland, 16001998: The Mote and the Beam (Basingstoke, 1998), 111. Lynch, Widows Curse, 2836. 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. Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. Even so, cursing was not dead. 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 nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Ireland, women usually wore headscarves when outdoors, to keep warm and as nods to strong patriarchal conventions of modesty and respectability. 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. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, metaphorical curses peppered Irish peoples conversations, jokes, songs and angry outbursts. ), Bob Norberry; or, Sketches from the Note Book of an Irish Reporter (Dublin, 1884), 228. Full analysis of ancient and medieval expressions of Celtic cursing, using evidence ranging from magical charms to curse tablets. May his neck get stiff, they mumbled.44, More serious were musical curses, stinging ballads calling for uncanny retribution. Whether or not the residents really credited the curse, it was politically counterproductive. 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. Cara Delay, Uncharitable Tongues: Women and Abusive Language in Early Twentieth-Century Ireland, Feminist Studies, xxxix (2013). This changed with the late nineteenth-century Gaelic revival and particularly after Irelands partition in 1922. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (Yale, 1990), 423. 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). Here's our pick of some top ancient Irish curses: 1. Nineteenth-century Irish folk possessed a deep oral literacy and a high capacity for verbal sparring. 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. The Celtic languages were a group of closely related languages sharing . Irish cursing was a potent art. By the close of the nineteenth century the masses of Irish beggars who had once stunned travellers were gone, and the beggars curse began to be forgotten.96 A few stories were still told about it.97 Occasionally, people who had fallen on hard times threatened to use it, to elicit a bit of money or food. Curses in the Bible Cinema, radio and television all diminished popular knowledge of cursing. 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. K. Theodore Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 18321885 (Oxford, 1984), 21213. 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. 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. 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. However, the main reason priests stopped throwing political maledictions lay elsewhere. But this general point also needs qualifying. Cursing was not only an intimidating magical weapon, but also a dark therapy. The emphasis on justice, on curses befalling evildoers, had waned. Drawing on these sources, this article begins the study of modern Irish cursing. 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. The Irish farmer, Donal Bohane, owns a 30-acre (12.1 ha.) Yet cursing did not always work that way. Lady Wilde, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland, i (Boston, 1887), 191. (London, 1902), i, 310; Dublin Weekly Register, 11 May 1844; Dublin Daily Express, 20 Apr. To illustrate: Irish cursing was closely linked with certain characters, whose identity gave them heightened powers. Ancient Roman Curses 1. 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. It was terrifyingly brutal, mustering dark feelings that marked people who had seen or maybe just heard about the events in question. These campaigns achieved little. 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. 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. Dublin Weekly Nation, 4 July 1857; Advocate, 17 Feb. 1858. Since the late 1920s it had been involved in the Irish Free States censorship of immoral books, cinema and journalism. Mchel Briody, The Irish Folklore Commission 19351970: History, Ideology, Methodology (Helsinki, 2016), chs. NFC, MS 538, 20813; Schools Collection: vol. Guardedly, they talked about piseogs, the evil eye (blinking), witchcraft and curses.165 However, those words now meant much the same thing. S. M. Hussey, The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, ed. 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. 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. 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. Between the 1820s and 1860s, Protestant missionaries strove to persuade Irish Catholics to abandon Rome and embrace Reformed faiths. We know this because of a remarkable ethnographic source: the First Report of the Irish Poor Law Commissioners (1835). [Thomas Secker], Against Evil-Speaking, Lying, Rash Vows, Swearing, Cursing, and Perjury. 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. the Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, (12 May 1818), PRONI, MS D1375/3/35/15. 1862. The time has come for redress. John ODonovan, Folk-Lore. 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. 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. Imprecating servants, labourers, soldiers and sailors were to be fined a shilling, and everyone else two, with escalating fines for subsequent offences and non-payers pelted in the stocks or whipped.21 Beyond the legal crackdown, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century churchmen sermonized and wrote tracts attacking not just common swearing but also the very near akin yet much graver habit: the monstrous cuftom of cursing.22 Mostly it was Protestants who spoke out, during moments of evangelical revival, but not exclusively. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale, 1985), xvixvii. 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. 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. Breandn Mac Suibhne and David Dickson (Dublin, 2000), 226. They expressed fear, loathing, hate and yearning for pitiless vengeance, for punishments exceeding anything one could mete out physically. Western People, 10 Oct. 1936; First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 543; NFC, Schools Collection: vol. During the modern era, the currency and style of magic words varied considerably, and over short distances. Henry Glassie, Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community (Philadelphia, 1982), 83. 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. Tutankhamun 2. Whatever the response, after scenes like these, the neighbours would talk, and not just about your crimes. Dr James Butlers Catechism, Irelands official statement of Catholic faith, explicitly prohibited cursing for being contrary to the Second Commandment.100 Within Roman Catholicism, however, this simple statement masked considerable ambiguity and inconsistency. Hugh Dorian, The Outer Edge of Ulster: A Memoir of Social Life in Nineteenth-Century Donegal, ed. Bathed in righteous power, steeped in the Holy Spirit, it was obvious that they should possess awesome imprecations. 95, 1467; vol. 2 and 5; Michael D. Bailey, The Disenchantment of Magic: Spells, Charms, and Superstition in Early European Witchcraft Literature, American Historical Review, cxi (2006). Maledictions were uttered across Ireland, North and South, Protestant and Catholic districts, even in towns and cities. With the legal system generally trusted to provide fair outcomes, perhaps there was little need for a justice-based supernatural punishment. Irish Independent, 11 Nov. 2000; Irish Independent, 8 Feb. 2002; Sunday Independent (Dublin), 26 July 1987. [Anon. Diodorus Siculus ( 5.28) expands upon this idea, stating that the Celts . Following Holy Communion, Father Loftus stood at the altar, holding a chalice. May you leave without returning. 1886. 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. Edward Nangle, The Origin, Progress, and Difficulties of the Achill Mission (Dublin, 1839), 534, 140. May you fall without rising. Fairies, rural remedies, stone circles and holy wells have made a modest comeback, in early twenty-first-century Ireland. Botorrita Plaques, the third plaque is the most extended text discovered in any ancient Celtic language. But evidence from other sources confirms not only that priests deployed their curses politically, but also that some Catholic bishops actively encouraged them. Here are some prominent curses in history. The women of_Irish_ and Celtic mythology are equally loved and feared. NFC, MS a102, 5862; O. Davies and D. Lowry-Corry, Killinagh Church and Crom Cruaich, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 3rd ser., ii (1939), 103; Isabel R. Crozier and Lily C. Rea, Bullauns and Other Basin-Stones, Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 3rd ser., iii (1940), 106; NFC, MS a102, 5860; Sle N Chinnide, A Frenchmans Tour of Connacht in 1791, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, xxxvi (1977/1978); James McParlan, Statistical Survey of the County of Sligo, with Observations on the Means of Improvement (Dublin, 1802), 106. Roscommon and Leitrim Gazette, 4 Apr. Shivas Curse Upon Brahma 4. John C. Messenger, Inis Beag: Isle of Ireland (Long Grove, Ill., 1983), 11317, 127. In dangerous times, many peoples thinking amounted to a magical version of Pascals wager, where it was best to stay safe, to avoid curses if doing so was not too costly, just in case. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England ([1971] London, 1991), 599611. Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, 258. 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. Gamble, Sketches of History, Politics, and Manners, in Dublin, and the North of Ireland, 48. 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. But even if the threat of a malediction did not shape someones behaviour in the way you had hoped, the evil prayer still had value. 3. 1835. The decline was partially compensated for by the increasing popularity of folklore books and pamphlets, where malediction stories were told and racy curses listed. Curses were thrown at Protestant evangelists and their converts too, with notable victims being the Reverend Edward Nangle (180083) and his mission on the island of Achill.111 Their tongues would fall out, local Catholics were warned, if they failed to bellow abuse at the heretics.112. St Brigids stone, Blacklion Co. Cavan. Hannes Magerstaedt/Getty Images In February. 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. Intimidating, cathartic and virtuoso: cursing mingled gruesome yet poetic phrases with ostentatious rites, in the name of supernatural justice.
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ancient celtic curses