John Arnold: Can you really put a curse on someone or a place? 

Can you really put a curse on someone, or on a family or a parish, a team or a whole county?

Good question that, especially now in the after-glow of Mayo’s brilliant win in the All Ireland Football Final against Kerry last month.

For 75 long, lonesome years - seven and a half decades - the boys from the County Mayo toiled and strove might and main but to no good.

I’m sure Andy Moran won’t take offence if I say Mayo had teams of better footballers than the present crop over the last quarter of a century yet they never captured Gaelic Football’s ‘Holy Grail’.

Over the years, the story of ‘the curse’ seemed to haunt them. It was claimed, but never actually proven, that the 1951 victorious Mayo team on their journey home passed through Foxford and did not give due respect to a passing funeral cortege.

That was supposed to have happened in 1951, and yet ’twas nearly 40 years later before the ‘curse theory’ came into everyday conversation.

A few years back, a certain journalist/historian did a forensic investigation into the happenings in Mayo - and in Foxford in particular - on Monday, September 24, and Tuesday, September 25 - the two days after the 1951 decider when Mayo beat Meath.

No ‘suitable’ death, wake or funeral could be found that would correspond to the story of the curse.

The kernel of the curse was that as long as any member of that 1951 team remained alive, Mayo would not win the Sam Maguire Cup. The burden rested easily on Paddy Prendergast’s broad shoulders. He died in 2021 -truly ‘the last man standing’.

In the intervening five years since Paddy’s death, did Mayo look any more likely to win the title than at any time in the previous 70 years!

Now, if ye really want a daycent curse just look at the lyrics of John B. Keane in Sive. A ‘match’ has been made between the young Sive and Sean Dota, a decrepit but wealthy farmer, and tinceirí Carthalawn and Pats Bocock, on the road to Abbeyfeale, are savage in their condemnation of the proposed coupling and the role of the matchmaker Thomasheen Sean Roo;

‘May the snails devour his corpse

And the rains do harm and worse

May the devil sweep the hairy creature soon

He’s as greedy as a sow

As the crows behind the plough

He’s the black man from the mountain Shauneen Roo’

Now there’s a curse for you!

But what is the power of a curse, or is it just a figment of someone’s over-fertile imagination? It’s hard to tell really, but the very idea of one person wishing evil on another is as ancient as the pyramids of Egypt or the Hill of Tara.

I suppose science will tell us that everything has an opposite; black/white, hot/cold, big/small, dark/light/ happy/sad, and so on. If that’s the logic, then similarly the happiness that a nice greeting or a compliment brings - ‘God be with all here’ or ‘Every blessing be with ye’ - must surely be counterbalanced by an opposite wish or desire.

Some great and powerful curses have been coined in Ireland. ‘May he die roaring’ ‘Bad cess to his seed, breed and generation’, and a really super curse is one I learned of from Longford: ‘May your milk never make butter, may your child never walk, your oul hens have no feathers, and may the fire going through your black soul be wider and deeper than the flaming mountains of Belturbet’!

Wouldn’t such sentiments put the heart crossways in the hardest and toughest old codger?

In ancient Ireland under the Brehon Laws, putting a curse or ‘mallacht’ on an individual or even an entire clan was seen as a perfectly legitimate way of eking out revenge for a wrong or a perceived wrong.

Did the curse always have the required effect - certainly not, but still, to have such a wish for evil to befall one would have made life fairly unbearable.

Near the present town of Fermoy, a chieftain was told by a wise-man, a druid or ‘saoi’ that his only son would die by drowning. Was this a curse ‘bestowed’ by a jealous or warring rival or just the ramblings of an ancient Gaelic fortune teller - we’ll never know now.

In any case, the chieftain , in order to protect his son, took him to the very top of Corrin Hill - far from river, lake, sea or stream or any semblance of water. However, the little child, on seeing his reflection in a container of water, used for building, sought to get closer to his watery image, and he was drowned.

Getting back to the reality of proven science, no-one will dispute the fact that there is an awful lot of good in this world of ours. Charities, voluntary bodies, self-help groups, and a myriad of others do endless amounts of positive actions daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. Their reward? Nothing, really, but the knowledge that helping others less fortunate is a right and proper thing to do.

All good and positive, but side by side with all this exists shocking evil.

People ask the question about war-lords, drug peddlers, gun runners and brutal regimes ‘Are they mad or bad?’ Probably a mixture of both.

Anyone that denies the existence of pure and simple evil in the world is a fool. Nowadays, the word ‘pisheog’ has really gone from our linguistic currency, but if good and evil are side by side still, I’ve no doubt that some people are still able to invoke the power of evil and wish misfortune on others.

There’s an old saying that ‘sticks and stones can break my bones, but names will never hurt you’ - not sure I fully agree with it though.

In the past, people, especially in rural areas, were said ‘to have the pisheogs’ or the evil eye. It was said a person might enter a house long ago and say ‘God bless all I see here’, but as the words were being uttered the speaker would blink, thus reversing his benevolent wishes.

I know that in today’s world, we no longer hear of rotten eggs in potato drills or butter smeared on door handles on May’s Eve. That doesn’t mean that evil-wishers have all disappeared or recanted.

Why is there still so much crime and awful instances of brutal and sadistic injury to others - happening on a daily basis? You can blame drugs and other substance abuse which were never heard of 50 or 60 years ago. Fair enough, but I think jealousy is more pronounced now than ever before.

Once upon a time, people had a more simple definition of what was enough. Now much wants more and the difference between need and greed seems to be getting smaller by degrees.

Can people, in wishing evil to happen to others, actually make it happen? I think they can and they do.

Call it a curse, a mallacht, or a pisheog - anything you like - but doing good in the face of seemingly insurmountable evil was never so necessary in the world as it is in 2026.

The opposite of a pisheog is a right good and kind blessing like: “May your blessings outnumber the shamrocks that grow, and may trouble avoid you wherever you go”.