Published: March 22, 2007 10:44 pm      

After reverence for St. Patrick’s Day, a taste of Irish curses

You may remember my column on St. Patrick’s Day.

Well, I was going to talk about the curses of the Irish, but found it imprudent for such a revered holiday.

As a result, I waited to expound on these celebrated expressions when the reverence had worn off a bit, so as to evade the derision of my Irish brethren.

Almost everyone knows about the Irish blessings. May the wind always be at your back, and may you be in heaven half an hour before the Devil knows you’re dead.

But there’s a darker side to the coin. The Irish curse. The malediction is as Irish as cable-knit sweaters, soda bread and Guinness Stout.

We’re not speaking here of the mundane ill-tempered yelp of profanity one hears on, say, the thoroughfares during rush hour or at the local pub.

That is to the true Irish curse what a Bud Light is to a Guinness: a poor, pale imitation.

A real Irish curse rolls off the tongue with the eloquence and momentum of poetry. It is a marvel of compact expression, the equivalent of a Japanese haiku.

For example: Six horse-loads of graveyard clay on top of you.

And: The anguished bankruptcy of the year to you.

And: May your hens take the disorder, your cows the “crippen” and your calves the white scour. May yourself go stone-blind so that you will not know you wife from a haystack.

You don’t have to know what “crippen” or white scour are to know you have been thoroughly cursed.

The very word comes from the old Gaelic, “cursachadh,” meaning abuse. All this started, according to scholars, with the sharp-tongued Celts.

In Roman times, anyone attacking the Irish could expect volleys of invective as well as stones and arrows.

Belief in the power of the word was unique in Irish society.

The curse was mightier than the sword. Irish armies once employed official cursers, usually a druid, or member of the ancient Celtic priestly class, who would stand in front of the battle line and chant curses and spells at the enemy.

There are those who regard cursing as a sin. Not, evidently, the Irish. After all, Jesus Himself cursed the fig tree.

St. Patrick was particularly eloquent when aroused to holy anger:

“You will be defeated in every engagement you take part in,” he thundered at a family that had stoned him and his followers, “and in every assembly you attend you will be spat on and reviled.”

And, for another opponent: “May every day be wet for ye,” a particularly nasty curse in a land where the occasional day of warm sunshine is regarded as a blessing.

Patrick cursed slave owners, horse thieves (later withdrawn when the horses were returned) and pagans who defiled the Sabbath.

The Book of Irish Curses by Patrick C. Power, published in Dublin in 1974, offers a treasury of maledictions by saints, priests, poets, widows and ordinary Irish folk.

In County Cork, one could lay a curse on a whole house by backing through the door while cleaning a boot.

Other time tested generic maledictions for all occasions include:

Confusion on the money! (Especially helpful against the rich.)

The death of kittens to you! (When drowning is sought.)

A fox on your fishing hook! (A fisherman’s curse.)

And the Devil figures in dozens of Irish curses, from the stark (the Devil swallow him sideways!) to the elaborate: May the Devil damn you to the stone of dirges, or to the well of ashes seven miles below hell, and may the Devil break your bones!

Irish curses are, no doubt, quite eloquent, but I still prefer to dwell on the typical Irish blessing: Six horse loads of good fortune and prosperity to anyone who finishes this column today … Let me know if it works.

Top ‘o the morning!

— Blankenship is a Register-Herald writer.

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