Folklore: Cursing Thread

Subject: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 10:05 AM

In Irish history and folklore, as well as that of other countries (including the US), cursing contests have been recorded. In Patrick Powers' "The Book of Irish Curses" (p.22, Mercer Books, 1974) he supplies this example from County Fermanagh:

Willis: May your hens take the disorder and your cows the crippen, and you calves the white scour! My yourself go stoneblind so that you will not know your wife from a hay-stack!

Murphy: May the seven terriers of hell sit on the spool of your breast and bark in at your soul-case!

I've seen some now-deleted threads that indicate that 'Catters are good at name calling, but I've long wondered if true cursing isn't a lost art.

So here's a chance to demonstrate otherwise. Pretend you've got someone in your sights (GWB, Tony Blair, GUEST, John Kerry, Bill Shatner, you choose your favorite) and blast 'em with a curse that will shrivel 'em up like a raisin in a dry wind. But -- you can't use any of the "seven words you can't say on TV" because they're so common they've lost their effectiveness. You gotta be creative! And name-calling isn't cursing, so if you're going to call someone names, put a curse in with it.

Here's another example from Powers to get you thinking. The whole thing is on page 87.

A Mháire Ní Dhúinléith, go n-imí ort!
Páiste trasna ort agus nár bheire tú coíche é!

Oh Moll Dunlea, may harm overtake you!
A child be within you, for ever unborn!

Go for it. Try to be creative.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 10:08 AM

Better done in the original--French-- from dear Hardiman:

"May you be pecked up the ass by a bird with a big, long beak!"

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 10:48 AM

Avaunt, wretch! May you be cursed! May the harpies of hell descend upon you and assail you with a thousand nameless ills, you shambling, cretinous, simpleton, you wart on a pimple's posterior! May your teeth gnash in impotent frustration! May your blood curdle in your veins! May you be despised and cast out from the world of men, to wander unpitied and scorned through the barren wilderness where even the scavenger birds mock you! May all the biting insects descend upon your wretched form in a pestilential cloud and drive you to jibbering madness! And there at last, alone and unsuccoured, may you meet the miserable fate you so richly deserve, and the jackals pick your bones!

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: GUEST,MMario
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 10:55 AM

two of the best I've ever heard:

May you live in "interesting" times.

May you get what you deserve.



Simple, so elegant, and so dastardly...

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 10:59 AM

This composition which is based on the old Irish curse song "Nell Flaherty's Drake" provides a fully updated inventory of colorful invocations.

Regards,

A

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 11:05 AM

Some people confuse cursing, swearing, vulgar language, and blasphemy, which are all different concepts. So far in this thread the posts have (correctly) been all about cursing. As a registered Pedant, I thank you, thank you, thank you!

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: JennyO
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 12:05 PM

Not original, but I have always liked this one:

"May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits!"

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Don Firth
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 12:33 PM

Glorious, Little Hawk! I've saved it for an appropriate occasion.

With the Middle East in the news these days, I recall an Egyptian exchange student I knew at the U. of W. back in the Fifties. He was once heard to mumble, "May wild pigs defile the grave of your maternal grandmother!!"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Ellenpoly
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 12:46 PM

Remind me not to get on your bad side, LH..xx..e

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Rapparee
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 01:07 PM

I've always liked "May the grass grow before the door to your home." The imagery of a place no one visits is wonderful.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 01:20 PM

Two common curses from my childhood:

May your balls turn square and fester at the corners

May your shit have only one end

eeeew.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Chief Chaos
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 01:24 PM

I always liked the one my mother used on us:

May you have children just like you!

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 01:46 PM

May the sewers of Rangoon back up into your breakfast cereal!

(Johnny Carson)

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Big Mick
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 02:10 PM

I have always loved the old Yiddish curse. It doesn't translate well, but you get the point:

You should only grow like an onion, with your head hanging in hell!"

Love those folks,

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 02:18 PM

Nell Flaherty's Drake is a favorite song of my childhood. We sang along with gusto when Dad sang it, and with the Clancy recording.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 02:47 PM

I find this sort of thing much more satisfying than mere vulgar swearing... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: GUEST,Shlio
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 02:54 PM

May your tongue and mind be cursed to express establishment views

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Leadfingers
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 03:11 PM

I was told that the worst thing you could call some one in German was
' Grosse Arshe Mit Euren ' Translated as A Big Arse with Ears On .

With apologies for my atrocious German !

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Don Firth
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 03:22 PM

Two more old Yiddish curses (in memory of my late friend, Elmar Lanczos, who told me of these):

Person with bad stammer, "Wh-wh-when I d-d-die, I w-w-w-will be-be-bequeath y-y-you my m-m-m-m-mouth!"

And

May you have a hundred mansions. And in each mansion, may you have a hundred bedrooms. And may each bedroom may you have a hundred beds. And may insomnia keep you bouncing from bed to bed!

Mazeltov!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 03:24 PM

May you grow the heart of a Republiscan and the mind of a Democrat!

A

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 03:27 PM

May you have the luck of Saddam!

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: GUEST
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 03:38 PM

"Some people confuse cursing, swearing, vulgar language, and blasphemy, which are all different concepts. So far in this thread the posts have (correctly) been all about cursing."

So where does cussing come into this?

Personally, I love "colorful" language. Expletives. Language to make a sailor blush. Talkin' like a truck driver. I actually had a truck driver once comment to me that even HE find my vulgar language shockingly entertaining.

Especially when used creatively, as the Irish use their "vulgar" language, I love to cuss and use foul mouthed language.

Also, blasphemy is pretty much in the eye of the believer, so taking any lord's name in vain has never been much of an issue to secular ole me. I don't think it is a generational thing though, as many presume. It has always been more of a class issue (ie nice, middle class/aspiring to assimilate to middle class folks use "civilized" language). My Scandinavian grandpa, who eventually became a wealthy man, detested what he thought was the phoniness in the "cultured" classes over language used.

Also, not all cultures frown upon women cussing and swearing, although that is usually the province and privlege of being an elder.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: GUEST,Den
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 03:52 PM

May your balls swell up and your bag never burst. Crude but effective.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Big Mick
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 04:00 PM

That lad is fit for tending mice at the crossroads

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Don Firth
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 04:20 PM

Another of Elmar's choice tidbits:

          Mrs. Ginsberg runs into Mrs. Plotnik and as they converse, Mrs. Ginsberg remarks, "That's a lovely diamond ring. So big."
         "This," says Mrs. Plotnik, "is the Plotnik diamond."
         "The Plotnik diamond?" says Mrs. Ginsberg. " That sounds romantic. Is there a story behind it?"
         "The diamond," says Mrs. Plotnik, "comes with a curse."
         "A curse?" gasps Mrs. Ginsberg, glancing apprehensively about her. "What is the curse?"   
         "Mr. Plotnik!"

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 04:42 PM

chuckle!

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 05:22 PM

two Yiddish classics-

You should live like a chandelier. You should hang all day and burn all night!

You should drop dead with an erection, so they can't close the lid on youe coffin.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 05:25 PM

In India that is not a problem.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 05:40 PM

"May you be stranded on an island with half a dozen of the most tedious boors you know!"

"May all the the people who know your deepest secrets meet when you are absent."

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Once Famous
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 05:50 PM

"May you take a spiked dildo up your ass."

This could also be used as a way to avoid hemmoroids in that thread.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: steve in ottawa
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 05:58 PM

Forgot to return that book?

For him that Stealeth a Book from this Library,
Let it change into a Serpent in his hand & rend him.
Let him be struck with Palsy, & all his Members blasted.
Let him languish in Pain crying aloud for Mercy,
Let there be no Surcease to his Agony till he sink to Dissolution.
Let Bookworms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not,
When at last he goeth to his final Punishment,
Let the flames of hell consume him for ever & aye.

From the Monastery of San Pedro, Barcelona, a blanket curse for the entire library...(I really wish this one existed, but unfortunately, it appears that it is apocryphal -- there is no monastery in San Pedro. It's so nasty though that I include it anyway.)

Always return books. As for stealing 'em...(shudder).

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 06:10 PM

May the songwriter you spurned, remember your name.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: harvey andrews
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 06:23 PM

May you suffer ambition without talent.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Big Mick
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 06:33 PM

The "Empty liquids from your mouth and solids from your bowels, prior to reading this" rule is hereby invoked. Anyone violating said rule shall be subject to the maximum punishment allowed.

Alaska Mike and Harvey Andrews, the only thing that saves youse layabouts is the fact that I had not invoked the rule. Otherwise you would both be languishing in a rat infested prison cell, cleaning monitor screens, soiled breeches, and keyboards from dawn to dusk.

Mick

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Joe_F
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 06:36 PM

About 1960 I lived in a rooming house with a common kitchen, and used to keep a flask of orange juice in the refrigerater, which was frequently robbed. I put it in a paper bag to lessen the temptation, but to no avail. At length, I composed the following and attached in to the flask, inside the bag, so that no honest person would see it:

THIEVES BEWARE! A CURSE

Hex'd is this flask of orange juice.
Cursed by thou who stealest from it!
Forthwith upon the floor of Hell
Mayst thou its contents blood-streak'd vomit
And live amidst its steam & smell
While round thee white-hot virgins plummet
And egg thee on to self-abuse
In saecula saeculorum, Amen!

It worked.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: wysiwyg
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 06:49 PM

To whom it may concern (not YOU of course):

Thou shalt be cursed....

to write long, heartfelt-- nay, impassioned-- and intricate posts...

... sprinkled with a multitude of deeply-Googled, thoroughly-researched, cleverly-titled blue clickies....

... only to find the Mudcat hard disk too full to take your post and your back button suddenly inoperable....


Yea, thou shalt be cursed to be increasingly voluble and articulate, yet find all the foregoing befall you oftener and oftener in geometric proportion to your developing writing skills...

And thou shalt find the Help Forum deaf to your cries, your personal page unable to send PMs, and your MudPal email addys lost from wherever you keep them....


Thou shalt wander nameless forever in the land of Mudcat and be forevermore known only as anonymous GUEST.


OK, I changed my mind, just kidding.

~Susan

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Don Firth
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 06:58 PM

Not a curse, exactly, but. . . .

Stan, sitting at the bar at the Blue Moon tavern, has downed several beers already and they've filtered through. His bladder is about to burst and he has to make tracks to the men's room, but he's just had a fresh pint delivered. He knows full well that someone will guzzle it while he's gone and he'll come back to an empty glass. So he grabs a napkin, hastily scribbles on it "I spit in this beer," puts it by the glass, and makes a dash for the plumbing.

When he gets back, he sees that under his note on the napkin, somone has written, "So did I."

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Amos
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 07:00 PM

May all your posts kill the thread you post them to.

A

Subject: Lyr Add: SEVEN CURSES (Bob Dylan)
From: freda underhill
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 07:04 PM

Seven Curses

Old Reilly stole a stallion
But they caught him and they brought him back
And they laid him down on the jailhouse ground
With an iron chain around his neck.

Old Reilly's daughter got a message
That her father was goin' to hang.
She rode by night and came by morning
With gold and silver in her hand.

When the judge he saw Reilly's daughter
His old eyes deepened in his head,
Sayin', "Gold will never free your father,
The price, my dear, is you instead."

"Oh I'm as good as dead," cried Reilly,
"It's only you that he does crave
And my skin will surely crawl if he touches you at all.
Get on your horse and ride away."

"Oh father you will surely die
If I don't take the chance to try
And pay the price and not take your advice.
For that reason I will have to stay."

The gallows shadows shook the evening,
In the night a hound dog bayed,
In the night the grounds were groanin',
In the night the price was paid.

The next mornin' she had awoken
To know that the judge had never spoken.
She saw that hangin' branch a-bendin',
She saw her father's body broken.

These be seven curses on a judge so cruel:
That one doctor will not save him,
That two healers will not heal him,
That three eyes will not see him.

That four ears will not hear him,
That five walls will not hide him,
That six diggers will not bury him
And that seven deaths shall never kill him.

Bob Dylan

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: BK Lick
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 10:47 PM

In Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn, Schmendrick the Magician improvises these:

I'll make you into a bad poet with dreams!
I'll change your heart into green grass, and all you love into a sheep!
You pile of stones! I'll set all your toenails growing inward, you mess with me!

But he also said, "The most professional curse ever snarled or croaked or thundered can have no effect on a pure heart."

-- BK Lick

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 16 Apr 04 - 11:10 PM

Gee, I never knew Dylan wrote Anna Thea.

And the most dire curse of all:


May you fall down and go boom!

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 12:32 AM

"May the fleas of a thousand camels infest the private parts of your favourite harem girl!"

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Little Hawk
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 12:43 AM

He rewrote Anathea, Dick...something bards have been doing for thousands of years. The version of Anathea you are referring back to was probably itself a rewrite. :-)

I rewrite old ballads too sometimes. Go crazy about it...

May you, Dick Greenhaus, find yourself locked in an underground vault with nothing to listen to but Bob's entire catalog of songs (rewrites of old folksongs included)...until Paul Anka records a duet with Maybelle Carter.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: LadyJean
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 12:47 AM

To a photographer: May your lense cap get lost, your lense get scratched and someone come into your dark room with a floodlight.

For a bad driver: May all four of your tires go flat in a bad neighborhood at night, in the rain.

For a letch: May every woman you pursue be either a lesbian, a hermaphrodite, or a transvestite, and may the latter return your affections.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Gurney
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 01:21 AM

One from my youth.

'May your ear-holes turn into arse-holes, and shit down your neck.'

Subject: Lyr Add: A GLASS OF BEER (James Stephens)
From: GUEST,Clint Keller
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 02:43 AM

Forgive me if I've posted this before, but it's one of my favorites: both invective and curses...

A Glass of Beer

James Stephens

The lanky hank of a she in the inn over there
Nearly killed me for asking the loan of a glass of beer;
May the devil grip the whey-faced slut by the hair
And beat bad manners out of her skin for a year.

That parboiled ape, with the toughest jaw you will ever see
On virtue's path, and a voice that would rasp the dead,
Came roaring and raging the minute she looked at me,
And threw me out of the house on the back of my head!

If I asked her master he'd give me a cask a day;
But she, with the beer at hand, not a gill would arrange!
May she marry a ghost and bear him a kitten, and may
The High King of Glory permit her to get the mange.

love the last two lines...

clint

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: freda underhill
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 03:35 AM

This is an evil curse, from which we must all break free.

Thrice the brinded mud cat hath mew'd.
Thrice and once the hamster whined.
Harpy cries 'Tis time, 'tis time.

Round about the keyboard go;
In the infected virus throw.

Mouse, that under cold modem
Days and nights has overthrownem
Helter Skelter weeping bat,
Toil thou first i' the charmed Cat.

Triple, triple boil and tipple;
Vodka burn, and goblet ripple.

Gizzard of a jelly snake,
In the microwave hiss and bake;
Eye of gingrich, toe of shrub,
Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld bug,
Condoleeza's blind worm's sting,
Pull Cheney's leg and Arnie's wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

Triple, triple boil and tipple;
Whisky burn, and gullet ripple.

Cool it with George Bush's bladder,
Then the curse is even badder.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: steve in ottawa
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 12:22 PM

Yikes, Freda. Blood curdelicious!

How about:
May all your pleasures be bad for your health.

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: freda underhill
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 12:28 PM

..now thats a bit lousy..

Subject: RE: BS: Cursing Thread
From: Celtaddict
Date: 17 Apr 04 - 01:43 PM

Henry II (who had so much trouble with sons Richard called Lionheart, Geoffrey, and John called Lackland), is said once to have cursed the lot of them roaring, "May all your children breech and die!"
(This was used in the brilliant "The Lion in Winter.")