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. 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. La Llorona III. Lynch, Widows Curse, 2836. 507, 554; vol. J. M. Synge, The Aran Islands (Dublin, 1907), 1434. Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, 349. Here's our pick of some top ancient Irish curses: 1. Historic Cowdray, Dublin Daily Express, 22 Aug. 1910. Celtic curse or "hemochromatosis" is a genetic metabolic disorder that the Celtic Irish descendants have inherited where the blood has excess iron. Newry Telegraph, 9 Oct. 1851; Limerick Chronicle, 11 Oct. 1851. 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. Concepts like belief, ritual, tradition, symbolism, mentality and discourse undoubtedly illuminate key aspects of historic Irish maledictions. Troubles or deaths befalling the earls of Egmont, to take a famous example, invariably prompted retellings of the tale of the solemn curse that had been laid on the family seat of Cowdray House, way back during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, in 1538.72 Even if you tried not to believe in it, being cursed made you seem weaker an impermanent and insecure presence, who was not long for this world. The Confessions of an Apostate, Meath People, 23 Oct. 1858. yourself! Also: Curse of Cain, Belfast Telegraph, 26 Nov. 1971, 5; 11 Sept. 1972, 3. Irish Times, 18 Feb. 1873; Cork Constitution, 21 Feb. 1873; Warder and Dublin Weekly Mail, 21 Feb. 1874. It also reminds us that not all types of magic share the same chronology of rise and fall, growth and decline, enchantment and disenchantment. 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. 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). Its unusual history underlines three wider points: (i) magic can usefully thrive in modern societies, figuring in the most vital areas of life; (ii) different types of magic have distinct chronologies; (iii) the most psychologically powerful forms of magic are subtle arts that deserve our (begrudging) respect. 12, 1718, 39. Not everyone in Ireland thought curses were legitimate. Celtic Curses. Why then was the righteous art of cursing so heavily cultivated in Ireland, in the commercial and increasingly sophisticated world of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? [Anon. 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. Irish cursing persisted partly because of its value, use and functions. 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. The sources of the curses are: National Folklore Collection at University College Dublin (hereafter NFC), MS 1838, 296. 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. Yet Irish societys patriarchal conventions hampered womens capacity to oppose. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale, 1985), xvixvii. 625, 258. 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. Nobody on the estate backed a winner yesterday, an informant later told the Belfast Telegraph. 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). Hugh Dorian, The Outer Edge of Ulster: A Memoir of Social Life in Nineteenth-Century Donegal, ed. 461, 456; vol. ), Crime, Violence, and the Irish in the Nineteenth Century (Liverpool, 2017). 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. 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. 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. They could take the initiative, however, by throwing curses at land-grabbers. Pg mo thin. Paulo Reis Mouro, Determinants of the Number of Catholic Priests to Catholics in Europe: An Economic Explanation, Review of Religious Research, lii (2011). 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. But when they cursed, women literally let their hair down.67 It marked a new if temporary status, their unwillingness to be restrained by ordinary gender norms, and their intention to unleash hidden powers. Overall though, cursing is best conceived of as an art because of the cultivation it required and the strength of the reactions it elicited. 78, 153. Mchel Briody, The Irish Folklore Commission 19351970: History, Ideology, Methodology (Helsinki, 2016), chs. 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. 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. 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 . 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. 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. ), Albions Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (New York, 1975), 303. Cess is from success. the Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, (12 May 1818), PRONI, MS D1375/3/35/15. To boatmen who sailed over their nets, fisherman spat out all sorts of imprecations, both profuse Gaelic maledictions and simpler curses in English, the writer J. M. Synge observed while sailing between the Aran Islands in Galway Bay.42 Interfering clerics, who habitually visited paupers, sometimes found their souls cursed to the hottest and lowest regions of hell, as happened to the Reverend Anthony McIntyre of Belfast in 1854.43 Policemen, too, were damned in this way, like a constable who during the Great Famine of 184555 stopped a hungry Ulster crowd from taking shipwrecked grain. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide, This PDF is available to Subscribers Only. Cursing, with its traditional resonances, was a powerful tool for conventionally demure women to loudly and forcefully object.143, Cursing dwindled, in Ireland, as its major uses disappeared and the networks that transmitted knowledge about it atrophied. 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. 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. Captain Prout [John Levy] (ed. 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. As well as publicly uttering maledictions, Irish women used modern means to advertise the dark forces they had unleashed.

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