The Celtic languages were a group of closely related languages sharing . But we should not exaggerate the extent of its decline, or imagine that it disappeared. (Dublin, 1834), i, 34950. II. 1, S816.
Irish Cursing and the Art of Magic, 1750-2018 - OUP Academic William Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, in Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, 2nd ser., 3 vols. 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 . 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. Some Protestant claims about cursing priests undoubtedly were. Adekunle G. Ahmed et al., Developing a Clinical Typology of Dysfunctional Anger, Journal of Affective Disorders, cxxxvi (2012); Amy Hyoeun Lee and Raymond DiGiuseppe, Anger and Aggression Treatments: A Review of Meta-Analyses, Current Opinion in Psychology, xix (2018); Jerry L. Deffenbacher et al., The Driving Anger Expression Inventory: A Measure of How People Express Their Anger on the Road, Behaviour Research and Therapy, xl (2002). Curses of Caesarea
Irish Folklore: Traditional Beliefs and Superstitions - Owlcation Like cursing African Americans in the early 1900s, Irish cursers revelled in luxuriant fantasies about their enemies being destroyed in specific, irremediable ways, with bones broken, flesh rotted, heads smashed, stomachs exploded, arms withered and eyes blinded.75 Curses expressed peoples deepest anger and most elaborate fantasies, making them a great relief of the heart, as one prolific Irish imprecator put it.76 If you could not stop an eviction, get a tolerable meal, recover your stolen possessions or ensure that your relatives behaved loyally, it was invigorating to imagine that, in time, an artful malediction would wreck the evildoers. 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. the Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, (12 May 1818), PRONI, MS D1375/3/35/15. 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. A Home Rule candidate John Philip Nolan trounced his unionist opponent, the Conservative William Le Poer Trench, before the result was overturned on appeal. At the mid-twentieth century, cursing was not just the province of aged farmers in the Gaeltacht western Ireland, where Gaelic was strongest. May your limbs wither and the stench of your rotten carcass be too horrible for hungry dogs. Partly this was because the church hierarchy was now firmly in control. 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. 78, 153. It was discovered in 2022 by Paul Shepheard and his wife Joanne during a metal detector rally in Haconby, Lincolnshire. College Dublin M.Litt. 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 . 3. The Letters of the Most Reverend John Mac Hale, D.D.
19thC Antico 63 Cromata Agata Ancient Celtic Viking Amuleto Contro Catholic priests were well placed to excel at the theatrical art of cursing. With these responsibilities, ecclesiastical leaders could no longer permit their priests to use such terrible language. Celtic language. George Borrow, Wild Wales: Its People, Language, and Scenery, 3 vols. Diodorus Siculus ( 5.28) expands upon this idea, stating that the Celts . Intimidating, cathartic and virtuoso: cursing mingled gruesome yet poetic phrases with ostentatious rites, in the name of supernatural justice. The words for curses and cursing did not really overlap with the vocabulary for witchcraft and piseogs, as evil spells were sometimes called. 126, 126; vol. 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 . Bathed in righteous power, steeped in the Holy Spirit, it was obvious that they should possess awesome imprecations. Stemming from moral indignation, the virtuoso but also shocking technique required knowledge, composure, practice and wit. Concepts like belief, ritual, tradition, symbolism, mentality and discourse undoubtedly illuminate key aspects of historic Irish maledictions. 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. Roscommon and Leitrim Gazette, 4 Apr. That ye may never have a days luck! Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland; Antain Mac Lochlainn, The Famine in Gaelic Tradition, Irish Review, xvii/xviii (1995). 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. That all belonging to ye may die with the hunger!! 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. 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). Soon after the Catholic Associations foundation, in 1823, Members of Parliament in Westminster began complaining about the outrageously intimidating Irish clerics, who were frightening electors with horrid stories about priests curses sending people blind, as if that might be their punishment if they were so unwise as to opt for the wrong candidate.103 Protestant periodicals also started carrying scattered reports about priests using maledictions and altar denunciations to make their parishioners pay the Catholic rent, a regular fee to support the Catholic Association.104 One might be tempted to dismiss these sectarian writings as fabricated propaganda. If .
Ireland's Witchy History: 6 Unforgettable Irish Sorcerers Celtic Curses. This is striking because, up to about the 1950s, cursing was probably the most valuable magic in a land where all sorts of mystic forces were treated with respect, from Marian apparitions to banshees. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale, 1985), xvixvii. 1846; Londonderry Sentinel, 26 Sept. 1835; Statesman and Dublin Christian Record, 31 Mar.
7 Ancient Roman Curses You Can Work into Modern Life It is time we acknowledged the polish and power of the art of magic. Folklorists in the newly independent Irish Free State began a nationalistic project dedicated to preserving the spirit of Ireland, the traditions of the historic Irish nation.12 Under the direction of figures like Sen Silleabhin, the government-funded Irish Folklore Commission (est. 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. For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription. ), Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland. Borrow, Wild Wales (1862), iii, 417, 422, 434, 436. 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. Other cursers stood up high, on rocks above island shores for instance, as policemen and bailiffs sailed away. I. 1901; Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 13 Mar. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that the ancient Celts, like many other people, believed that the soul did not die with the body. Psychosomatically, it can heal, injure and even kill; intimidate, haunt and terrify; or invigorate, inspire and empower. For example: Mark C. Taylor, Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago, 1998); Christine D. Worobec, Witchcraft Beliefs and Practices in Prerevolutionary Russian and Ukrainian Villages, Russian Review, liv (1995); Sarah Tarlow, Ritual, Belief and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Cambridge, 2011), chs. 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 Irish were formidable cursers. Keith Thomas, An Anthropology of Religion and Magic, II, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vi (1975), 95. 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. La Llorona III. At Tully in County Mayo, farmland owned by Miss Pringle remained unoccupied for at least fifteen years during the 1880s and 1890s, because the old tenant had been evicted. Ronald Hutton, Pagan Britain (Yale, 2013), viiviii. Overall though, cursing is best conceived of as an art because of the cultivation it required and the strength of the reactions it elicited. 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. Until quite recently, it was not unusual for historians to suggest that only early man and pre-modern Europeans credited words with magical qualities.59 Clearly that is wrong: languages metaphysical power is an enduring theme in the history of magic, whether ancient or modern. 78, 153; MS 42, 203; MS 538, 212. 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. Driver Jailed After Placing Lurid Widows Curse on Garda that Her Family Would Die, Irish Examiner, 8 Jan. 2019,
. 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. Source: Wellcome Collection. Then another witness, a cottager, chimed in: I know my wife always gives when she is big with child, and she says she must do it, or she would have a miscarriage.95 His remarks feel genuine. For example: Maureen Flynn, Blasphemy and the Play of Anger in Sixteenth-Century Spain, Past and Present, no. 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.) 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. Curses in the Bible However, the main reason priests stopped throwing political maledictions lay elsewhere. 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 the cold north blast of misery nip your body, while your heart burns like fire. The devil go with you and sixpence, an thin youll want neither money nor company, was a mock malediction men used to tease women.38 Bad scran to you, meaning poor food, was a jokey curse suitable for needling either sex; and surely a poignant one, given that for much of the nineteenth century most peoples diet was restricted to potatoes, buttermilk, an occasional smattering of fish and maybe some wild greens.39 Bad luck to your own soul for the head-ache you gave me yesterday, with laughing at your old stories, and drinking your new wine, was the kind of cheeky curse friends uttered, with a wink, to their drinking buddies in Dublins alehouses.40, Beyond the jokes were half-serious maledictions, simple utterances for releasing quick bursts of anger. Mal de Ojo of Mexico 2. Letter from Alexander McNeile, Ballycastle, to the Rt Rev. Celtic Curses - Kindle edition by Mees, Bernard. Literature & Fiction May the arm that is now sick, sling dead and powerless by her side before twelve months time. The most dangerous malediction, Irish commentators and ordinary people agreed, was a priests.98 I mind nothing but the priests curse, one of Lady Anne Dalys tenants told her in 1872, when describing how he could endure any intimidation from his neighbours except that.99. Bound over to keep the peace, Ellie remained unbowed saying: I cursed Walsh, and I will continue to curse him until I die.141 Less dramatically, in 1967 Mary McCormack of Cloonard in Castlerea put her widows curse on informants who told the police she was holding unlicensed public dances.142 The Republic of Ireland was a patriarchal and conservative place, where until the 1970s married women were largely kept at home and out of the workforce. Ancient Roman Curse Tablets Invoke Goddess Sulis Minerva to Kill and A kneeling woman, perhaps a widow, calls down a curse on the landlords evicting her family. Whether or not the residents really credited the curse, it was politically counterproductive. Something obvious like bad luck to you invited the reply good luck to you, thin; but may neither of them ever happen. Dr. James Butlers Catechism: Revised, Enlarged, Approved, and Recommended by the Four R.C. 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. You will see within 12 months that your family or someone belonged to you will be dead.162. These campaigns achieved little. yourself! Hibernia's 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 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). First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 761. $76.48 4 Used from $78.80 14 New from $76.48. Bad cess on you. May you be stretched out under the gravestone.45 In places like County Clare, on Irelands west coast, they sang in Irish and performed for family and neighbours. May you fade into nothing, like snow in summer. 2 and 5; Michael D. Bailey, The Disenchantment of Magic: Spells, Charms, and Superstition in Early European Witchcraft Literature, American Historical Review, cxi (2006). Recognizing this challenges us to reconsider our wider ideas about the history of magic. 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. Another clerical curse victim was Thomas Mahon, a retired policeman and possible child killer from Carna in County Galway. 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. Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, 3840. It provides the first full overview and analyses of the ancient Celtic use of binding curses (as attested in Old Celtic and Latin inscriptions) and examines their mooted influence in later medieval expressions. Ancient cultures used curses to invoke deities, to bring punishment upon enemies, and to express dissatisfaction with someone or something. Common Brittonic - Wikipedia Such was the nasty curse pronounced, in 1829, by a Catholic priest from Tarbert, County Kerry, on discovering that one of his flock was marrying a Protestant.55 Often though, it can be difficult to uncover the exact wording employed by Irelands greatest cursers, because journalists censored horrible maledictions. The Most Rev. 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. After all, as the old saying goes, "Prevention is better that cure". Kiss my butt! 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. ), Foclir Gaeilge agus Barla, 200, 687; Samuel Lover, Legends and Stories of Ireland (Dublin, 1832), 187. Other cursing traditions were more current because they chimed with the needs and conditions of large numbers of people. Maledictions were uttered across Ireland, North and South, Protestant and Catholic districts, even in towns and cities. J. J. M. Vingerhoets, Lauren M. Bylsma and Cornelis de Vlam, Swearing: A Biopsychosocial Perspective, Psychological Topics, xxii (2013). 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. That question has a multi-causal answer, which I will build up throughout the rest of this paper.