Plain imprecations were uttered in English: the curse of the poor and helpless cripple upon you every day you put a coat over your back, a beggar on the shores of Lough Patrick was overheard saying, in 1816.91 But beggars usually laid their worst maledictions in Irish Gaelic.92 Biadh an taifrionn gan sholas duit a bhean shalach!, for example, meaning may the Mass never comfort you, you dirty queen!.93. (Dublin, 1834), i, 34950. But we should not exaggerate the extent of its decline, or imagine that it disappeared. However, they had little sense of cursing as a distinct type of moral magic.78. 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. 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. 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. 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 . A Moonlight Curse, Dublin Daily Express, 20 Apr. In 1969 a member of the Trotskyist civil rights group Peoples Democracy put the curse of Cromwell on three hundred council tenants from Armagh, because they failed to join a protest demonstration outside Armagh City Hall, preferring to organize their own march instead. May your bones be broken, for example, and a thousand placings of a rope round your neck.41 Irish people said these things during arguments, after accidents, or following near misses. Vol. 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. Yet cursing did not always work that way. 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. 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. Between the 1820s and 1860s, Protestant missionaries strove to persuade Irish Catholics to abandon Rome and embrace Reformed faiths. They, after all, were immersed in the Judeo-Christian cursing tradition, trained in practice of solemn ritual and public prayer, and possessed of sacred objects like chalices, church bibles and vestments. Thomas Waters, Irish Cursing and the Art of Magic, 17502018, Past & Present, Volume 247, Issue 1, May 2020, Pages 113149, https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz051. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. When Spells Worked Magic In ancient times, a curse could help you win in the stadium or in the courts, and a plea addressed to a demon could bring you the woman of your dreams. Stemming from moral indignation, the virtuoso but also shocking technique required knowledge, composure, practice and wit. Yet Irish societys patriarchal conventions hampered womens capacity to oppose. NFC, MS 538, 20813; Schools Collection: vol. Although not really an art, it seems to have nurtured determination and vengeance, amongst people experiencing terrible loss. 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. It must begin with deep history and the cursing traditions I noted earlier. 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. Whether or not the residents really credited the curse, it was politically counterproductive. Matthew Dutton, The Law of Masters and Servants in Ireland (Dublin, 1723), 11417; [Anon.] The distinction was important. Some cursed from the altar, damning and excommunicating the opposition, prohibiting friendly contact, and proclaiming that they walked on earth as accursed beings.106 Others joined campaign trails. Full analysis of ancient and medieval expressions of Celtic cursing, using evidence ranging from magical charms to curse tablets. "May you all go to hell and not have a drop of porter to quench your eternal thirst" For some Irish people, no porter is hell so the two are. Their greatest impact was at places like Doughmakeon and Oughaval in County Mayo, where during the early nineteenth century galvanized clergymen cleared their parishes of ancient cursing stones, destroying or burying unusual rocks that had long been used to lay powerful maledictions.24 A good number of these sinister monuments remained, however, including the bed of St Columbkille, a hillside rock near Carrickmore village, which was still being used to lay curses during the 1880s, as well as cursing stones on the island of Inishmurray in Sligo Bay and St Brigids stones near Blacklion in County Cavan (see Plate 1).25 The anti-cursing laws were sporadically employed and supplemented by the Town Police Clauses Act of 1847 and the Towns Improvement Act of 1854, both of which forbade profane language.26 But cursing was too deeply embedded in everyday life for crackdowns based on vague legislation to be effective. 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. To explain this it is helpful to take an unfashionably functionalist approach, which shows how cursing most persisted when it was useful. 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. Nineteenth-century Irish folk possessed a deep oral literacy and a high capacity for verbal sparring. 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. May you die without a priest. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 449, 550, 565, 577, 628, 648. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that the ancient Celts, like many other people, believed that the soul did not die with the body. King Tut's Curse (and Other 'Mummy's Curses') The burial mask of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Curses of Caesarea Michael knew a woman who threw the widows curse. !.51 But workaday curses were not particularly suitable for proper cursing because they invited easy retorts. 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. 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. Michael L. Doherty, The Folklore of Cattle Diseases: A Veterinary Perspective, Baloideas, lxix (2001), 556. Some of his respondents made an equivalence between curses and maleficent practices like leaving eggs and dead animals on neighbours farms.166 People no longer distinguished between different types of occult attack. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. Murphy, Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century, 3840. It also reminds us that not all types of magic share the same chronology of rise and fall, growth and decline, enchantment and disenchantment. Now, though, the main targets were sinful, antisocial parishioners. That all belonging to ye may die with the hunger!! 95, 112. Blessings and curses: Another Celtic tradition that survived long into Christian times was the belief in blessings and curses. Another clerical curse victim was Thomas Mahon, a retired policeman and possible child killer from Carna in County Galway. Many thanks to the librarians and archivists who helped me locate sources for this article. NFC, Schools Collection: vol. 3. Botorrita Plaques, the third plaque is the most extended text discovered in any ancient Celtic language. After the Great Famine, survivors wrote songs excoriating the landlords and agents who had evicted starving tenants. 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 . People who believed they were cursed occasionally wrote to newspaper agony aunts, describing themselves as being under an evil power, as if curses were identical with black witchcraft.164 Likewise, in the 1990s and early 2000s countryside, in places like County Limerick and County Tipperary and even rural Ulster, there were still farmers and veterinarians who had seen strange things and experienced weird agricultural misfortunes. May his neck get stiff, they mumbled.44, More serious were musical curses, stinging ballads calling for uncanny retribution. In Ulster, the north-eastern province, Presbyterians uttered curses in Scottish accents using the dialect of Ulster-Scots. Tutankhamun 2. At the mid-twentieth century, cursing was not just the province of aged farmers in the Gaeltacht western Ireland, where Gaelic was strongest. the Roman Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, (12 May 1818), PRONI, MS D1375/3/35/15. Rituals and a certain style were required to launch maledictions, to give them energy as the antiquary William Carleton put it.62. Magic is a potent force in the world, not supernaturally but psychologically. Since the late 1920s it had been involved in the Irish Free States censorship of immoral books, cinema and journalism. ), Foclir Gaeilge agus Barla, 200, 687; Samuel Lover, Legends and Stories of Ireland (Dublin, 1832), 187. Santeria Curses 3. Cursing was demanding, sophisticated, formidable and imposing. 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. 36871; Kimberly B. Stratton, Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology, and Stereotype in the Ancient World (New York, 2007), esp. 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. 1967. Whatever the response, after scenes like these, the neighbours would talk, and not just about your crimes. An inherited disorder that stems from a problem in the way the body handles iron in the blood has been called a "Celtic Curse" because of the condition's high prevalence among people with. 1886. See The Art of Magic and the Power of Faith, in Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays (Boston, 1948) and Owen Davies, Magic: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, 2012), 112. Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, 348. Quoted in: Ignatius Murphy, The Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century (Dublin, 1991), 129. I Think Im Cursed, Sunday Life, 21 May 1995, 30. Gearid Tuathaigh, Languages and Identities, in Biagini and Daly (eds.) farm in the townland of Coolnagarrane in County Cork. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for 19thC Antico 63 Cromata Agata Ancient Celtic Viking Amuleto Contro Draghi at the best online prices at eBay! Borrow, Wild Wales (1862), iii, 417, 422, 434, 436. 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. Amongst these strategies was cursing. Maledictions were uttered across Ireland, North and South, Protestant and Catholic districts, even in towns and cities. The first comprehensive study of early Celtic cursing, this work analyses both medieval and ancient expressions of Celtic imprecation: from the binding tablets . 1846; Ballyshannon Herald, 17 July 1863. May you leave without returning. In multilingual Ireland, people cursed in many tongues. OFallon, Irish Curses, 32; Robin Flower, The Western Island or Great Blasket ([1944] Oxford, 1979), 49. 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. 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. May you fall without rising. 498, 307; vol. 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. Everybody knew what a beggars curse was: it was a regular and familiar part of life, in pre-famine Ireland. 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. Formally, the Church forbade it. I do not want to have the widows and orphans curse.138, With curses, Irish women complained, agitated, denounced, denigrated and fought back. 1973. Every time misfortune struck they would mention your curse, whispering how you had never had any luck since that fateful day. 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. Concepts like belief, ritual, tradition, symbolism, mentality and discourse undoubtedly illuminate key aspects of historic Irish maledictions. 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. The Bjorketorp Runestone 3. 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. ), Albions Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England (New York, 1975), 303. Kerry Evening Post, 19 Sept. 1835; Niall R. Branach, Edward Nangle & the Achill Island Mission, History Ireland, viii (2000), 358. The consequences were catastrophic: the curse didnt fall on the people she give it too but it fell on herself. Celtic curse or "hemochromatosis" is a genetic metabolic disorder that the Celtic Irish descendants have inherited where the blood has excess iron. 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). One of the more charmingly bitter traditions of ancient Greece and Rome were "curse tablets"spells written on lead, wax or stone that laid out the ways in which people had been wronged. 1827). 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. However, the main reason priests stopped throwing political maledictions lay elsewhere. That ye may never have a days luck! Like the New Age movement internationally, in Ireland this revival was principally concerned with holistic wellness and spiritual exploration. The piece is expected to sell for between 800-1,200 ($1,440). Also: First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 525, 530, 537. Titim gan ir ort. ), Bob Norberry; or, Sketches from the Note Book of an Irish Reporter (Dublin, 1884), 228. Curse tablets found at Bath appeal to Sulis to punish the perpetrators of the crime. 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. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners for Inquiring into the Condition of the Poorer Classes in Ireland, with Appendix (A) and Supplement (hereafter First Report from His Majestys Commissioners) (House of Commons, 1835), 496. (London, 1862), iii, 436. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England ([1971] London, 1991), 599611. E. P. Thompson, The Crime of Anonymity, in Douglas Hay et al. II. Widows were certainly plentiful and needful of power. 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. of Ireland Maynooth Ph.D. thesis, 2002), pt 1, 25, 250, 261, 2767; Lisa M. Bitel, Tools and Scripts for Cursing in Medieval Ireland, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome, li/lii (2006/2007); Luke McInerey, A Sixteenth Century Bardic Poem Composed for Sen Mac Conmara, Lord of West Clann Chuilin , Seanchas Ardmhacha, xxiii (2010); Katharine Simms, Guesting and Feasting in Gaelic Ireland, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, cviii (1978). Irish Times, 18 Feb. 1873; Cork Constitution, 21 Feb. 1873; Warder and Dublin Weekly Mail, 21 Feb. 1874. yourself! Chief amongst these useful maledictions, during the impoverished early nineteenth century, was the beggars curse. For the imprecators themselves, cursing was a powerful form of coercion. Curse . It all came out. Known as the Celtic Curse, haemochromatosis is a genetic disorder seen mainly in people of Celtic origin which causes those affected by it to absorb excessive amounts of iron into the blood. 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. 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. 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. After all, as the old saying goes, "Prevention is better that cure". May the cat eat you, and may the devil eat the cat. The good versus evil model is simple and was always popular in Irish folk tales. Southern Reporter and Cork Commercial Courier, 30 Apr. Roman Catholic Questions: Church of Rome in Ireland, British Critic, v (1829), 1867; Wexford Conservative, 28 Oct. 1835. Captain Prout [John Levy] (ed. 95, 1467; vol. This had various causes: emigration, population decline, the near disappearance of the precarious peasant class, the increased availability of official poverty relief, and new laws criminalizing wandering begging. Source: Crawford Art Gallery, Cork. The first drop of water to quench your thirst may it boil in your bowels. A solemn curse was uttered with poise and determination, with a hair-raising seriousness seldom found in everyday life. Breandn Mac Suibhne and David Dickson (Dublin, 2000), 226. A kneeling woman, perhaps a widow, calls down a curse on the landlords evicting her family. 460, 294; vol. Home Gordon (London, 1904), 220. 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. 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. Trasna ort fin. Saxon (Bedlington, 1877), 10910. 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. As well as publicly uttering maledictions, Irish women used modern means to advertise the dark forces they had unleashed. Evening Herald, 12 Mar. 126, 126; vol. A few tried to send the maledictions back. For example: Maureen Flynn, Blasphemy and the Play of Anger in Sixteenth-Century Spain, Past and Present, no. Druidry in Contemporary Ireland, in Michael F. Strmiska (ed.) Cursing, once understood as a righteous supernatural assault, had been subsumed into the general category of evil magic. The sources of the curses are: National Folklore Collection at University College Dublin (hereafter NFC), MS 1838, 296. Amongst their standard questions, the commissioners asked witnesses whether people bestowed charity because of beggars curses. Driver Jailed After Placing Lurid Widows Curse on Garda that Her Family Would Die, Irish Examiner, 8 Jan. 2019, . The decline was partially compensated for by the increasing popularity of folklore books and pamphlets, where malediction stories were told and racy curses listed. 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. Cess is from success. In Northern Ireland, as sectarian violence flared during the dark days of the Troubles, curses were sporadically revived. The congregation laughed and even Charles himself chuckled. A Handbook of Irish Pre-Christian Traditions, 2 vols. ), Foclir Gaeilge agus Barla (Dublin, 1904), 200. 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 . Cinema, radio and television all diminished popular knowledge of cursing. Kerry Evening Post, 19 Sept. 1835; 1 Apr. (London, 1920), 131. Sean OFallon, Irish Curses, Northern Junket, xi (n.d.), 28. 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. Those land-grabbers never had a bit of luck. These campaigns achieved little. 465, 83. 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 Celtic languages were a group of closely related languages sharing . 625, 258. Samus Duilearga, Introductory Note, in Sen Silleabhin, A Handbook of Irish Folklore (Detroit, 1970). Magic & Curses. 461, 456; vol. But this general point also needs qualifying. Celtic language. Christiansen, A Norwegian Fairytale in Ireland?, Baloideas, ii (1930), 238; Pdraig Tuathail, Folk-Tales from Carlow and West Wicklow, Baloideas, vii (1937), 67. Hardcover. Reproduced with permission. 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. ], Focaloir Gaoidhilge-Sax-Bharla (Paris, 1768). St Brigids stone, Blacklion Co. Cavan. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, many people understood the righteous arts finer details. 1. Hoppen, Elections, Politics, and Society in Ireland, 212. Gamble, Sketches of History, Politics, and Manners, in Dublin, and the North of Ireland, 48. 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. CC BY. Yet in Ireland, a proclivity for this dark kind of cursing goes back millennia. These Celtic literary maledictions thus appear closer in style to a third type of Greek and Roman imprecation - other than katadesmoi and conditional curses - one known only from ancient literary sources. 1835. 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 . May the cold north blast of misery nip your body, while your heart burns like fire. 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. That question has a multi-causal answer, which I will build up throughout the rest of this paper. Ronald Hutton, Pagan Britain (Yale, 2013), viiviii. Go. 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. Something obvious like bad luck to you invited the reply good luck to you, thin; but may neither of them ever happen. They formed a sharp edge of the Catholic Association, a mass movement founded by the barrister Daniel OConnell to campaign against anti-Catholic discrimination and for the repeal of Irelands union with Britain. 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. 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.