ancient celtic curses ancient celtic curses

Following Holy Communion, Father Loftus stood at the altar, holding a chalice. A righteous occult attack, a dark prayer for terrible pains to blight evildoers, cursing was unnervingly common from ancient times until the mid-twentieth century. 126, 126; vol. To be intimidating and cathartic, cursing required knowledge, practice, wit, skill and composure. 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. 1846; Londonderry Sentinel, 26 Sept. 1835; Statesman and Dublin Christian Record, 31 Mar. S. M. Hussey, The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, ed. They could take the initiative, however, by throwing curses at land-grabbers. In this epic struggle, priests curses were potent forms of intimidation, which helped the notionally peaceful Catholic Association exercise great pressure on voters, whilst at the same time remaining just within the pale of the law. A curse is one or many M agic spells which are placed upon people with the intention of harming them. Statutes Passed in the Parliaments Held in Ireland. NFC, MS 548, 242; Schools Collection: vol. Yet it is probably safe to assume that, in nineteenth-century Ireland as in the ancient world and elsewhere, special curses existed for attacking penises, breasts, vaginas and arses. May your limbs wither and the stench of your rotten carcass be too horrible for hungry dogs. Nobody on the estate backed a winner yesterday, an informant later told the Belfast Telegraph. NFC, MS 538, 20813; Schools Collection: vol. Beyond the stock villains of Irish popular culture, their targets included bankers, merchants and police informers.46 James Carey, whose testimony helped convict the men who murdered the government ministers Thomas Henry Burke (182982) and Lord Frederick Cavendish (183682) in Dublins Phoenix Park, was the object of venomous songs wishing that he be afflicted with everything from bedbugs to death.47 For wrongs past and present, the old adversary across the water was also a frequent target: Gods curse on you England, you cruel-hearted monsters.48, Jokey, angry and tuneful curses were mere horseplay, some said. Full analysis of ancient and medieval expressions of Celtic cursing, using evidence ranging from magical charms to curse tablets. Not swearing, turning the air blue with four-letter words, but spoken maledictions for smiting evildoers. 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. 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). They received many different answers, but one thing was clear. Full analysis of ancient and medieval expressions of Celtic cursing, using evidence ranging from magical charms to curse tablets. 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. In 1817, Mrs McCollum from Ballycastle in County Antrim reportedly became almost crazy after she was cursed by her local priest, shunned by her neighbours, and denied the rites of the Catholic Church.68 She may well have experienced something close to what physiologists call voodoo death, where a fearful magical attack inspires an extreme fight or flight response, an adrenaline surge so powerful that it causes real physical and mental damage.69 Beyond such pains, it was deeply humiliating to be publicly cursed, to have your misdeeds advertised and family openly threatened, especially by someone who was notionally your social inferior. Ancient finds (among them long Gaulish curse texts, Celtic Latin Curse tablets found from the Alpine regions to Britain, and fragments . First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 687. I did. I. Partly this was because the church hierarchy was now firmly in control. The piece is expected to sell for between 800-1,200 ($1,440). 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. Mostly though, Irelands cursers were women. He would have got away with it, had not the local priest heard rumours and put his malediction on anyone who did not report what they knew to the police. Geneticists at Trinity College have sequenced the genomes of ancient Irish farmers, discovering that haemochromatosis (known as the 'Celtic curse') was inherited by people from the Pontic . Other cursers stood up high, on rocks above island shores for instance, as policemen and bailiffs sailed away. Druidry in Contemporary Ireland, in Michael F. Strmiska (ed.) Publicly, respectable men insisted they did not. 12, 1718, 39. However, the main reason priests stopped throwing political maledictions lay elsewhere. Broken Mirror Curse 2. If we want to appreciate how magic can move people in these ways, we need to better appreciate how accomplished, skilful and imposing it is. 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. Humorously, he asked: where was the blackguard who canvassed for the Conservatives? A Handbook of Irish Pre-Christian Traditions, 2 vols. George Borrow, Wild Wales: Its People, Language, and Scenery, 3 vols. Mallacht - Celtic Curses Go n-ithe an cat th is go n-ithe an diabhal an cat. Not everyone in Ireland thought curses were legitimate. 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 . Everybody knew what a beggars curse was: it was a regular and familiar part of life, in pre-famine Ireland. Mal de Ojo of Mexico 2. [Anon. 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. They would rebound on their casters, unless they quickly cancelled their maledictions with a blessing formula such as agus crosaim th in Gaelic or its English translation: I cross you.36 Proverbs in Gaelic and English reiterated the point: Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.37, Whether uttered in English, Irish or Ulster-Scots, not all maledictions were magical. It was terrifyingly brutal, mustering dark feelings that marked people who had seen or maybe just heard about the events in question. Curses were part of many peoples begging strategies. Every time misfortune struck they would mention your curse, whispering how you had never had any luck since that fateful day. A solemn curse was uttered with poise and determination, with a hair-raising seriousness seldom found in everyday life. Amongst their standard questions, the commissioners asked witnesses whether people bestowed charity because of beggars curses. R. F. Foster, Modern Ireland: 16001972 (1989), 338; K. Theodore Hoppen, The Mid-Victorian Generation: 18461886 (Oxford, 1998), 582. 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 beggars curse did not decline because it was formally disproved. 1862. That ye may never have a days luck! Wood-Martin, Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland, ii, 58; Robert MacAdam, Six Hundred Gaelic Proverbs Collected in Ulster (Continued), Ulster Journal of Archaeology, 1st ser., vii (1859), 282. A Scotsman named Patrick Dowd, for example, who in 1901 bought a distressed farm in Sligo. The relationship is revealed in the timing. 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. In Ulster, the north-eastern province, Presbyterians uttered curses in Scottish accents using the dialect of Ulster-Scots. The heaviest curse at the present, wrote a teacher from the same county in the same year, is Marbhadh Fisg ort the squeeze band of Death on you.145. 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. 625, 258. 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. 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. On the Traditions of the County of Kilkenny, Transactions of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, i (1851), 365. Christiaan Corlett, Cursing Stones in Ireland, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, lxiv (2012). May you leave without returning. 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. yourself! First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 52530, 560, 585. 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.) Hardcover. Celtic language. That question has a multi-causal answer, which I will build up throughout the rest of this paper. 95, 112. 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 Beggars also needed stories about how they had fallen on hard times. 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.