24 THE president's address. 



render it obsolete was that the curse was deemed so efficacious 

 that the satire was regarded as an unnecessary adjunct. St. 

 Columba visited St. Loman with the White Legs, who hid his 

 books lest his visitor should ask to have them as a loan. 

 Thereupon Columba cursed the books that they should no more 

 profit the owner, and when Loman went for them he found that 

 the wet had so stained them that they were well nigh illegible. 

 St. Patrick cursed Brenainn that he should have neither son 

 nor successor. 



A saint's curse by no means struck only the living ; it 

 affected after generations. Thus St. Patrick cursed the sons of 

 Ere for stealing his horses, that their descendants should fall 

 into servitude.* 



Some jugglers performed their tricks before Patrick. He 

 had no food to give them, so he sent to King Loman hard by for 

 some meat. At the time Patrick's deacon, Mantan, was cooking 

 the King's dinner. Loman and Mantan declared that they* 

 would not spare any of the meat for those mountebanks. There- 

 upon Patrick cursed them, that Loman' s race should never after 

 produce a king or a bishop, aad that Mantan should never 

 become noted as a saint, but that sheep and swine should run 

 over his grave, f 



In the same way David cursed Joab : "Let there not fail 

 from the house of Joab one that hath an issue, or that is a leper, 

 or that leaneth on a staff, or that falleth on the sword, or that 

 lacketh bread. J" 



"When we consider that at least some, if not all, of the non- 

 Semitic inhabitants of Canaan belonged to the same stock as 

 that which formed the substratum of the population in Ireland 

 and Great Britain, we need not be surprised to find the same ideas 

 relative to the force of a curse prevalent in Palestine as in 

 Ireland. A curse, once launched, as already said, could not be 

 recalled. If wrongfully pronounced, then it reverted and fell 

 on the head of him who had pronounced it ; but no amount of 

 repentance, no amends made, could render it innocuous. The 



* " Tripartite Life," p. 109. 

 t Ibid., p. 203. 

 J2Sam., iii, 29. 



