An ABC of Witchcraft Past and Present - Doreen Valiente 2018

Famous Curses

Can a curse really work? The answer of world-wide and age-old experience says that provided the curse is justly deserved, it can and does.

This might seem to classify a curse as an example of black magic; but this is by no means necessarily so. Records show that the curse which works with deadliest effect is that which is addressed to the powers of fate and justice, in vengeance for a wrong that human law cannot or will not right.

It may be argued that superstitious fear and a troubled conscience, on the part of the person who has been cursed, will acount for the curse’s apparent working. This can, indeed, account for some famous curses taking effect; but not for all. It could not, for instance, explain the working-out of the Tichbourne Curse, which was laid upon a noble English family in the reign of Henry II, and came true in precise detail centuries afterwards.

The originator of this curse was a pious and strong-minded woman, Lady Mabell de Tichburne, who wished to leave an annual gift or ’dole’ to the poor. Knowing the mean disposition of her husband, she told him on her death-bed that if he or his descendants ever stopped this charity, great misfortune would fall upon the family, their name would be changed and their race die out. As a sign that their doom was impending, there would be the birth in one generation of seven sons and in the next of seven daughters, and the family home would fall down.

For hundreds of years the Tichbourne Dole, in the form of a yearly free distribution of bread, was given to the poor. Then in 1796 the seventh baronet, Sir Henry Tichbourne, decided that the event had become a nuisance, and stopped it.

In 1803 a large part of the old mansion collapsed. The seven sons, followed by seven daughters, were duly born; and a series of family misfortunes, including the notorious law-case of the Tichbourne claimant, convinced the descendants of Lady Mabell that their ancestral curse was a fact. The family, whose name had been changed to Doughty-Tichbourne by circumstances of inheritance, decided that the dole should be resumed. It is given out yearly to this day, though now in the form of flour instead of bread.

Another famous curse which worked out over the centuries was the Doom of the Seaforths. This is an example of those curses which take the form of a fatal prophecy. Scotland seems to be the particular home of them, probably because of its long tradition of the second sight. The Doom of the Seaforths was pronounced by Kenneth Odhar, known as the Brahan Seer. He was condemned to death as a witch by the Countess of Seaforth, and publicly burned at the stake in the latter part of the seventeenth century. When on his way to execution, he solemnly pronounced these words: “I see a chief, the last of his house, both deaf and dumb. He will be the father of four fair sons, all of whom he shall follow to the tomb. He shall live careworn and die mourning, knowing that the honours of his house are to be extinguished for ever, and that no future chief of the Mackenzies shall rule in Kintail.”

The seer went on to describe in detail what misfortunes would overtake the family; and he said that when four great lairds were born “one of whom shall be buck-toothed, the second hare-lipped, the third half-witted, and the fourth a stammerer”, the Seaforth then holding the title would be the last of his line. This prophecy, made publicly in such dramatic form, was long remembered; and in 1815 the line of the Seaforths became extinct, in the exact circumstances the Brahan Seer had pronounced.

Both of the above stories are well-founded upon historical fact. A number of similar tales could be added from old English and Scottish family records.

In 1926 the Reverend Charles Kent, Rector of Merton in Norfolk, revealed that he had held a public religious service in an attempt to lift the famous ’Curse of Sturston’, a Norfolk village that was cursed in the time of the first Queen Elizabeth. He used an old altar tomb in the ruined churchyard as a lectern from which to read the service; and people gathered from miles around. He believed that his action had at last laid the curse; but subsequent events proved him wrong.

The curse had been pronounced upon the Lord of the Manor of Sturston, one Sir Miles Yare, by an old woman reputed to be a witch. Exactly why she should have cursed her landlord is not clear; but she uttered a malediction upon him and his house and lands, and said that the place should go to ruin until not one stone remained upon another. The area has indeed steadily declined. The old manor became a farmhouse, and eventually stood empty, falling to pieces, and believed to be haunted.

The Rector had been asked to lay the curse, because of the district’s long history of ill-luck and decay. For a time, things did seem brighter after his service; but with the coming of the Second World War the area was taken over for military training. The inhabitants left, and today Sturston is a lost, desolate place, with its buildings in ruins. The curse is almost fulfilled.

Another story of a witch’s curse is that connected with the Earldom of Breadalbane. For many years visitors to the old castle at Killin, on Loch Tay, were shown the place where a witch was put to death by order of the then Earl of Breadalbane. They were told the story of how the witch cursed the family of Breadalbane, and prophesied that the earldom would not descend direct from father to son for seven generations. This came precisely true, as was noted by a letter in The Times on 18th May 1923, under the heading “A Witch Story”.

The correspondent stated that he had heard of the curse when it had already held good for five generations; and noted that the obituary of the Earl of Breadalbane, which The Times had just published, completed the seventh generation, the title passing to a distant cousin.

How can we account for these things? Is there some power in the unseen which hears the words of the wronged? Or do people at the point of death sometimes discover in themselves a faculty of prophecy, and foresee the doom of their oppressors?

These possibilities might account for the above curses, but hardly for the awesome history of the Hope Diamond, a jewel which has been followed through the years by a trail of disaster too long to detail here, and which seems beyond any claim of coincidence. The stone first appeared in Europe in the time of King Louis XIV of France. It was brought to the French Court by a man called Tavernier, who had stolen it from a statue in a temple in Mandalay. The diamond is a wonderful violet-blue colour, and its present weight, after being recut, is 44 1/4 carats. It reposes today in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. where perhaps the atmosphere of science, and the fact that no one is actually wearing it or trying to make money from it, may keep in abeyance whatever strange and horrifying power has given it such an accursed history. However, the only way in which the curse of the Hope Diamond could finally be laid, might well be to return it to the temple from which it was stolen

Lastly, here is a story of a curse that might have been induced auto-suggestion—but it worked just the same. In April 1795 a naval officer, Captain Anthony Molloy of H.M.S. Caesar, was found guilty by court-material martial of a charge which amounted to cowardice in the face of the enemy, in connection with his conduct at the battle of 1st June 1794. The court, however, found that Molloy’s conduct was so uncharacteristic of him that they did not impose the death-sentence he might have suffered, but merely ordered him to be dismissed from his ship.

Robert Chambers, in his Book of Days, tells us:

A very curious story is told to account for this example of ’the fears of the brave’. It is said that Molloy had behaved dishonourably to a young lady to whom he was betrothed. The friends of the lady wished to bring an action of breach of promise against the inconstant captain, but she declined doing so, saying that God would punish him. Some time afterwards, they accidentally met in a public room at Bath. She steadily confronted him, while he, drawing back, mumbled some incoherent apology. The lady said, “Captain Molloy, you are a bad man. I wish you the greatest curse that can befall a British officer. When the day of battle comes, may your false heart fail you!” His subsequent conduct and irremediable disgrace formed the fulfilment of her wish.