CHAPTER XI.

IMPRECATIONS, SPELLS, AND THE BLACK ART.

IMPRECATION (Guidhe).

The imprecations, which form so important a part of the vocabulary of thoughtless and profane swearing, are in Gaelic corruptions of English expressions. Thus, one of the commonest—diabhul Mac-eadhar is a corruption of ‘devil may care,’ and though no language has a monopoly of oaths and curses, and English is not always to blame, it is some satisfaction that needless profanity is not entirely of native growth.

Most Gaelic imprecations are mere exclamations, condemnatory not so much of the person himself as of what he is saying or doing. Of these the following are of common use:

A bad meeting to you! (Droch còmh ’l ort!).
A bad growth to you! (Droch fàs ort!).
Bad understanding to you! (Droch ciall ort!).
Bad accident to you! (Droch sgiorram ort!).
Bad —— ? to you! (Gum bu droch drùileach!
or drùthalach dhuit!).

Black water upon you! (Bùrn du ort!).84
A down mouth be yours! (Beul sìos ort!).85
A wry mouth be yours! (Beul seachad ort!).
Go to your grandfather’s house! (Tigh do sheamar dhuit!).
The mischief be in your side! (An dunaigh ad chliathaich!).
The burning of your heart to you! (Losgadh do chridhe ort!).
Little increase to you! (Beagan piseach ort!).
Little prosperity to you! (Beagan àidh ort!).
The spell of your death-stroke be yours! (Sian do ghonaidh ort!).
Death without a priest to you! (Bàs gun sagart ort!).
Wind without rising be yours! (Gaoth gun dìreadh ort!), i.e. a
wind that will throw you on your beam-ends, and not allow
you to right.
Your black certain death-stroke to you! (Sàr du do ghonaidh
ort!).
The place of the dead be yours! (Marasg, i.e. marbh-thasg,
ort!).
The number of Friday be yours! “The curse of Friday be
yours!” “The end of the seven Saturdays to you!”
May you be late! (Gu ma h-anamoch dhuit!).
The direction in which you turn the back of your head, may
you never turn your face! (An toabh bheir thusa cùl do
chinn, gar an d’ thig an t-aon latha bheir thu t’ aghaidh!),
etc., etc.

When a curse proceeds from rage or malevolence, it is at the same time a confession of impotence. The party uttering it is unable at the moment to indulge his rancour in any other way. If he had the power he would bring all the woes he threatens or imprecates there and then on his enemy’s devoted head. Patience is no element of wrath and rarely enters the house of malevolence, and if the man who curses his enemy had the artillery of heaven at command, he would at that moment devote his enemy to unspeakable misery. This impotence of rage is the reason why curses are so frequently ascribed to angry old women.

Those who have seen old women, of the Madge Wildfire school, cursing and banning, say their manner is well calculated to inspire terror. Some fifteen or twenty years ago, a party of tinkers quarrelled and fought, first among themselves, and then with some Tiree villagers. In the excitement a tinker wife threw off her cap and allowed her hair to fall over her shoulders in wild disorder. She then bared her knees, and falling on them to the ground, in a praying attitude, poured forth a torrent of wishes that struck awe into all who heard her. She imprecated “Drowning by sea and conflagration by land; may you never see a son to follow your body to the graveyard, or a daughter to mourn your death. I have made my wish before this, and I will make it now, and there was not yet a day I did not see my wish fulfilled,” etc., etc. “Once,” says one who is now an old man, “when a boy I roused the anger of an old woman by calling her names. She went on her knees and cursed me, and I thought I was going to die suddenly every day for a week after.”

The curse causeless will not come, but a curse deserved is the foreshadowing of the ultimate issue of events. The curse of the oppressed, who have no man to deliver them, is at times but the presage of the retribution which the operation of the laws of the moral world will some day bring about. Hence we find such expressions as, “She cursed him and obtained her wish.” The curse came upon the oppressor, not because of the malediction, but because what was asked for was part of the natural sequence of events in the moral government of the world. For this reason, the curse of the poor is undesirable. There is something wrong in the relation between superior and inferior when it is uttered; authority has been misused, and wisdom and patience have been awanting, selfishness has overstepped its due limit, and the just influence of the superior has degenerated into wantonness of power. In the expatriations from the Highlands, there was much in this respect to be reprobated, and it is most creditable to Highlanders, and is greatly to be ascribed to the influence of religion over them, that in the songs made at the time of the Clearances, there are no curses against the oppressor.

A common expression in the imprecations used by old women was, “May no benefit be in your cheese, and no cheese in your milk.”86

There is said to be a curse on an estate in Argyllshire, that a lineal descendant will never succeed to it, and on one of the principal castles in Perthshire, that no legitimate heir (oighre dligheach) will own it till the third generation (gus an treasa linn). This latter curse was paused by the haughtiness of an old woman, a former mistress of the castle, who lived entirely on marrow.

All evil wishes can be counteracted by the bystander saying, after each curse, “The fruit of your wish be on your own body” (Toradh do ghuidhe far, etc.). On the occasion above referred to, of the banning by the tinker wife, her frightful tirade became ludicrous from the earnestness with which this was done by one of the native women who was listening.