Curse Tablets. May you be accursed in the sight of God, and hated by your fellow man. Hardcover. A geis or geas (pl. NFC, MS 548, 242; Schools Collection: vol. The Irish farmer, Donal Bohane, owns a 30-acre (12.1 ha.) In court, hundreds of witnesses described how the local Catholic clergy and others had used various intimidating practices, from violence to threatening letters to sermons calling for the Conservatives to be ostracized. Women and children elicited more sympathy, so husbands generally waited out of view. Virginia Crossman, Politics, Pauperism and Power in Late Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Manchester, 2006), 915, 119222; Caitrona Clear, Homelessness, Crime, Punishment and Poor Relief in Galway 18501914: An Introduction, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society, l (1998). Catholic Emancipation Petition of the Roman Catholic Bishops of Ireland, Hansard, xvi, col. 796 (2 Mar. That question has a multi-causal answer, which I will build up throughout the rest of this paper. It was simpler, informed more by biblical imagery than oral tradition, yet it did have elements of public performance. But cursing songs were not a dying art, part of a vanishing Gaelic folk culture. A Day at Lough Patrick, Christian Examiner and Church of Ireland Magazine, xi (1831), 48. 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). 95, 1467; vol. 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. To lay foundations for a locally funded but nationally organized system of poor relief, commissioners traversed Ireland, gathering evidence about poverty from rich and poor, Protestants and Catholics, men and (much less) women. 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. 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. 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. 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. Here are some prominent curses in history. In this respect, it was an art. 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. Lady Wilde, Ancient Cures, Charms, and Usages of Ireland: Contributions to Irish Lore (London, 1890), 224. Dr. James Butlers Catechism: Revised, Enlarged, Approved, and Recommended by the Four R.C. ), Cambridge Social History of Modern Ireland. 514, 19; vol. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 52530, 560, 585. 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. Your soul go to the Devil might be nullified with my soul from the Devil.53. 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. Cursing was largely ignored during the late 1800s and early 1900s occult revival in Ireland. Recognizing this challenges us to reconsider our wider ideas about the history of magic. yourself! 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. Cuchulain in Battle" by Joseph Christian Leyendecker (1874 - 1951) shows the famous Irish warrior flanked by a crow, often thought to be a manifestation of the Morrgan or badh. Trasna ort fin. Irish imprecations can be analysed using familiar academic categories such as belief, ritual, symbolism, tradition and discourse. Formally, the Church forbade it. First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 687. 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. 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. Inspiration for a fuller, more dynamic understanding of cursing, and perhaps other forms of magic too, can be derived from the way that magicians since classical times have imagined the ars magica the art of magic.18 Although pioneering anthropologists like Bronisaw Malinowski acknowledged the art of magic, this understanding of the controversial topic has been forgotten by many recent studies in which, as one not unsympathetic critic puts it: all too often a sense of magic is lost.19. 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. The bayonet of the British soldier will protect him, admitted a speaker at a meeting of the Callan Tenant Protection Society in 1847, but the widows curse will meet him on the threshold and wither him.135 Literary stories about Irish life contained a trope about an abandoned cottage, left unoccupied since the previous occupant uttered her widows curse.136 In the real world, loosely similar events took place. 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. Celtic curse or "hemochromatosis" is a genetic metabolic disorder that the Celtic Irish descendants have inherited where the blood has excess iron. 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. Cursing was probably too common and Catholic, and certainly too distasteful and subversive for these amateur scholars, who focused instead on recording what they regarded as rapidly disappearing pagan survivals. Source: Crawford Art Gallery, Cork. I Think Im Cursed, Sunday Life, 21 May 1995, 30. Common Brittonic (Welsh: Brythoneg; Cornish: Brythonek; Breton: Predeneg), also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, was a Celtic language spoken in Britain and Brittany.. For the imprecators themselves, cursing was a powerful form of coercion. 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. These clever formulas were the basis for the unnerving art of real cursing, a scary but widespread occult attack that Irish folk used in their struggles over vital areas of life, from land and food to politics, religion, gender and family disputes. But the atmosphere darkened when the priest said anyone voting for Captain Trench would die bearing the mark of Cain, as would their children.117 Next Father Loftus pronounced a Gaelic malediction that Charles could not understand, but which affected the Irish-speaking majority so much that they instinctively touched their chests, in horror. 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. Hibernias 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 parties.6 The idea had important consequences. Privately, amongst their families at home, the reality was different. Nothing was more feared than a really venomous malediction, commentators on Irish manners claimed, without much exaggeration.10 Yet this intriguing form of modern magic remains almost entirely unstudied.11 Antiquarians and folklorists were only marginally interested in it, with the exception of a lively essay by William Carleton (17941869). 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. But evidence from other sources confirms not only that priests deployed their curses politically, but also that some Catholic bishops actively encouraged them. Cursing was not only an intimidating magical weapon, but also a dark therapy. Copy of the Minutes of the Evidence Taken at the Trial of the Galway County Election Petition (1872), pt 1 (House of Commons, 1872), 173. Many thanks to the librarians and archivists who helped me locate sources for this article. 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. 460, 294; vol. 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. J. M. Synge, The Aran Islands (Dublin, 1907), 1434. 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. A solemn curse was uttered with poise and determination, with a hair-raising seriousness seldom found in everyday life. 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. These campaigns achieved little. That ye may never have a days luck! Other cursing traditions were more current because they chimed with the needs and conditions of large numbers of people. 1973. 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. $76.60 - $78.80 4 Used from $78.80 14 New from $76.60. 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. Stemming from moral indignation, the virtuoso but also shocking technique required knowledge, composure, practice and wit. 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. David Nash, Analyzing the History of Religious Crime: Models of Passive and Active Blasphemy since the Medieval Period, Journal of Social History, xli (2007); Paul OHiggins, Blasphemy in Irish Law, Modern Law Review, xxiii (1960), 1556. Irish cursing persisted partly because of its value, use and functions. Yet cursing did not always work that way. In this dangerous environment, it was best to be cautious. Full analysis of ancient and medieval expressions of Celtic cursing, using evidence ranging from magical charms to curse tablets. 1846; Ballyshannon Herald, 17 July 1863. 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. 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. Dinneen (ed. Archbishops of Ireland, as a General Catechism for the Kingdom (Dublin, 1836), 42. May you die without a priest. Gearid hAllmhurin, Flowing Tides: History and Memory in an Irish Soundscape (Oxford, 2016), 67. When they knelt in the street to curse, crying out to the Almighty and all who would listen, like a poor woman from County Kerry recalled in one early twentieth-century memoir, it would have been hard to know how to react.70 Some victims unconvincingly mocked their imprecators, saying they did not care about their curse any more than their blessing.71 Others walked off, shaking, or maintained what they imagined was a dignified silence. I did. In Ulster, the north-eastern province, Presbyterians uttered curses in Scottish accents using the dialect of Ulster-Scots. In 1786, for example, Munsters Catholic bishops announced their determination to sanction clerics who habitually poured forth from the altar the most shocking curses and imprecations.23. They contained no real viciousness and Irish folk used them only to give force to their speech.49 This was not quite so. Some of the more inventive could be used in our 21st-century livesjust swap out the Roman names and use your imagination to get dark magic to do your bidding. 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. Inevitably, it left traces on a wide range of literary material, from Gaelic dictionaries to local newspapers, government reports, travellers writings, letters, novels, legal documents, memoirs, diaries and religious tracts. John ODonovan, Folk-Lore. Ronald Hutton, Witch-Hunting in Celtic Societies, Past and Present, no. May you fall without rising. William Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, in Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry, 2nd ser., 3 vols. Go. John Gamble, Sketches of History, Politics, and Manners, in Dublin, and the North of Ireland, in 1810 (London, 1826), 201. For example: Maureen Flynn, Blasphemy and the Play of Anger in Sixteenth-Century Spain, Past and Present, no. Imeacht gan teacht ort. 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. Samus Duilearga, Introductory Note, in Sen Silleabhin, A Handbook of Irish Folklore (Detroit, 1970). Some of the dwindling number of monoglot Gaelic speakers wondered whether English might be especially suited for firing imprecations.28 Really though, the great cursing language was Irish Gaelic, still spoken by around 40 per cent of people in 1801, when Ireland was incorporated into the United Kingdom, though a century later the figure had fallen to under 15 per cent, with less than 1 per cent speaking Irish Gaelic only.29 Cursing formulas were very common in the Irish language, as the Victorian linguist George Borrow noted.30 Irish also had an abnormally large number of curse words, certainly more than English, and probably more than Scottish Gaelic too.31 Ten Irish Gaelic nouns for a curse were recorded in Bishop John OBriens 1768 dictionary, and thirteen in Edward OReilly and John ODonovans more definitive 1864 compilation, along with numerous verbs for the act of cursing and adjectives to describe accursed people.32 Mallacht was the main Irish term for a curse, but Gaelic speakers had many alternatives. May Gods curse and my curse light down on her every day she rises, a mother from Ballybay cried in 1911, on the woman she blamed for spoiling her relationship with her adult son.74 Many maledictions, however, were horribly detailed and gory. Curses had many connotations and Irish people used them to joke, flirt, lament, insult, threaten and rage. On a symbolic level too, priests status within the Church enhanced their cursing abilities. Although not really an art, it seems to have nurtured determination and vengeance, amongst people experiencing terrible loss. Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, metaphorical curses peppered Irish peoples conversations, jokes, songs and angry outbursts. "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. Hugh Dorian, The Outer Edge of Ulster: A Memoir of Social Life in Nineteenth-Century Donegal, ed. Michael Rooney of Blacklion, for instance, who was interviewed for the Irish Folklore Commission in 1974. For victims, it was threatening, disturbing and humiliating. There was another difference, between turn of the twenty-first-century curses and the maledictions of the 1800s. Curses of Caesarea Cursing continued to be rife during the period of the Enlightenment, throughout the 1800s, and until about the mid-twentieth century. 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. Rituals and a certain style were required to launch maledictions, to give them energy as the antiquary William Carleton put it.62. Parliamentary Elections (Corrupt And Illegal Practices) BillBill 7, Hansard, cclxxx, col. 84293 (18 June 1883). 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 . (eds. 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. 1901; Irish News and Belfast Morning News, 13 Mar. Paulo Reis Mouro, Determinants of the Number of Catholic Priests to Catholics in Europe: An Economic Explanation, Review of Religious Research, lii (2011). Intimidating, cathartic and virtuoso: cursing mingled gruesome yet poetic phrases with ostentatious rites, in the name of supernatural justice. ), Foclir Gaeilge agus Barla (Dublin, 1904), 200. Hardcover. Jonathan Ben-Dov, The Poors Curse: Exodus XXII 2026 and Curse Literature in the Ancient World, Vetus Testamentum, lvi (2006). Like the New Age movement internationally, in Ireland this revival was principally concerned with holistic wellness and spiritual exploration. Pg mo thin. The congregation laughed and even Charles himself chuckled. Cursing was stress busting and cathartic, for two reasons. 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. (London, 1862), iii, 436. Source: Wellcome Collection. Botorrita Plaques, the third plaque is the most extended text discovered in any ancient Celtic language. 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 . Patrick Kennedy, Legendary Fictions of the Irish Celts (London, 1866), 547; Reidar Th. 1. Tutankhamun 2. 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. archaeologists found a tablet in which a Roman named Silvianus told Nodens, the Celtic God of . In fact, there is good reason to think that the power of cursing clerics actually grew, in the wake of the famine.114 Their ratio was rapidly increasing, from roughly one priest per three thousand laity in 1840, to approximately 1 per 1,500 in 1870, and still growing.115 Priests could now realistically monitor their parishioners and, if they misbehaved, pronounce personalized imprecations.116 Good evidence of this powerful combination was generated by the disputed Galway by-election of 1872. Not everyone in Ireland thought curses were legitimate. Quoted in: Ignatius Murphy, The Diocese of Killaloe in the Eighteenth Century (Dublin, 1991), 129. May his neck get stiff, they mumbled.44, More serious were musical curses, stinging ballads calling for uncanny retribution. Carleton, An Essay on Irish Swearing, 3489. Particular thanks to Dr Crostir Mac Crthaigh and Mr Jonny Dillon of the magnificent National Folklore Collection, University College Dublin. 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. Think. The women of_Irish_ and Celtic mythology are equally loved and feared. Like many early twentieth-century anthropologists, Malinowski was nonetheless rather condescending about the topic. In an era when we often see anger as dysfunctional, as something needing to be managed, and when many contemporary forms of indignation are indeed horribly crude (think of road rage or abusive outbursts on the Internet), surely it is worth considering the artful ways people expressed and used anger, historically.15 Thankfully, there is no lack of evidence. Geasa are common in Irish and Scottish folklore and mythology, as well as in modern English-language fantasy fiction. 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. Rev. It was terrifyingly brutal, mustering dark feelings that marked people who had seen or maybe just heard about the events in question. Lady Wilde, Ancient Legends, Mystic Charms, and Superstitions of Ireland, i, 1325; NFC, Schools Collection: vol. 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. Blessings and curses: Another Celtic tradition that survived long into Christian times was the belief in blessings and curses. Julian Adelman, Food in Ireland since 1740, in Biagini and Daly (eds. Thomas Waters, Cursed Britain: A History of Witchcraft and Black Magic in Modern Times (Yale, 2019), ch. 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. Its adherents revisited and reinterpreted Irelands mystical traditions, particularly its country remedies, ancient myths, magical legends and pagan monuments.158 Needless to say, the historic art of cursing did not chime with this agenda. 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. Cess is from success. Basic maledictions like hells cure to you, the divils luck to you, and high hanging to you were easy to remember and quick to say.50 Sometimes, for real cursing, they were piled on top of each other, as if to multiply their effect. During the Troubles, Ulsters radical politicians invoked and even threw a few curses, with mixed results. 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. 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. Irish cursing was a potent art. Publicly, respectable men insisted they did not. 1, S816. 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. The piece is expected to sell for between 800-1,200 ($1,440). The consequences were catastrophic: the curse didnt fall on the people she give it too but it fell on herself. ), Bob Norberry; or, Sketches from the Note Book of an Irish Reporter (Dublin, 1884), 228. 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. Santeria Curses 3. She was considered as a nourishing, life-giving mother goddess and as an effective agent of curses wished by her votaries. 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. S. M. Hussey, The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent, ed. 573, 383; vol. 119, 507. Probably cursing was too vicious, humorous and Catholic for it to be translated into the dreamy and non-denominational realm of the Celtic Twilight.157 Cursing experienced none of the post 1970s esoteric revival, either. Nor was it employed exclusively by the weak and powerless. 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. dissertation, 2012). Bathed in righteous power, steeped in the Holy Spirit, it was obvious that they should possess awesome imprecations. St Brigids stone, Blacklion Co. Cavan. Western People, 10 Oct. 1936; First Report from His Majestys Commissioners, 543; NFC, Schools Collection: vol.