Episode 13: Off the Path

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I've spent most of my life in the presence of troubled sports teams.

Growing up in the Chicago area, I was always aware of how long the Cubs had gone without winning a World Series title.

It was less a point of pain and more a numb spot in the collective conscience of everyone around me.

When I moved to Boston in the late 90s, I discovered a similar culture, this time centered around the Red Sox.

Again, here was a team that had spent decades waiting.

Year after year, Hope would be manufactured and piled high in the cart of expectations, only to have that cart dumped on its side at the end of each season.

Until 2004, that is.

That was the year things changed.

That was the year that brought the tower of hopelessness and doubt, a tower that took 86 years to construct, brick by brick, year after year, and brought it all crashing down.

The wait was over.

Now, I don't plan to talk about baseball today, but I do think that the story of these teams like the Cubs and the Red Sox have something valuable to teach us about how our minds work.

Our ability to justify, to explain, to make sense of what seems so often to not make any sense at all.

That's what I find fascinating.

Humans are so very good at finding reasons.

Lurking behind the Red Sox' 86-year wait like a shadow, and still hovering over the Cubs after 107 long years, are the excuses.

More specifically, the curses.

I mean, how else are we to explain such droughts, such logic-defying gaps in their scorecards?

Of course, both of these teams had to be cursed, right?

But the Bambino and Billy Goat weren't the first curses in history, and they were far from the last.

And while some curses have been entertaining or even laughable, others have defied explanation long enough to make people wonder.

In fact, some have even been deadly.

I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore.

The word curse comes from the Old English word curse.

Just drop the E, and you'll have the root.

The meaning isn't actually very clear, but one of the uses of the Old English word is to denote a path or a route.

Now, I'm no etymologist, but I think the word picture here is actually pretty clear.

Life is like a journey.

Sometimes we walk along the path of our choosing, and sometimes we're pushed off and into the woods.

It's in those moments of chaos, of the unexpected and the unfortunate, that we feel like we've lost control.

It's as if someone or something has knocked us off the path we were traveling.

In those moments, it might be appropriate to say that we've been cursed.

The curses as concept, though, have been around since the beginning of humanity.

In the earliest examples, a curse was a punishment handed out by a deity to misbehaving or devious human beings.

The story of Adam and Eve in the Christian Bible is full of curses, doled out after their disobedience to God's instructions.

Hard physical work, painful childbirth, and expulsion from paradise are all described as curses.

The Irish speak of curses as if they were something like birds.

Once a curse is spoken aloud, they say it can float around a place until it finds its intended target.

If the receiver wasn't in the room, a curse could drift around for up to seven years.

Not aimlessly, though.

A curse was like a heat-seeking missile.

waiting until the moment when the person would arrive.

In Scandinavia, curses were were more like bullets.

A person might utter a curse at an enemy, but it could be turned back or returned to the speaker, where it would deal the effects of the curse on the speaker instead.

Think Harry Potter of Wanduels, if you will.

The Moors of the Middle Ages also had a very interesting tradition involving curses.

It was said that if a man followed a prescribed set of rules and requirements, he was allowed to ask others to help him with something important.

If, after jumping through all of the correct hoops, his request was still refused, a curse was said to descend upon all who refused him.

Not a specific curse that he made up himself, but a general social curse, as if tradition itself were punishing the unhelpful people.

According to legend, the Celtic people of Europe used curses in a powerful way.

If a tenant farmer was fired and evicted from the land that he had been working, he would quickly go and gather stones from all over the property.

Then, he would put those stones in a lit fireplace, fall on his knees, and pray.

What did he pray for exactly?

Well, they prayed that for as long as the stones remained unburnt, every possible curse would descend upon their landlords, his children, and all the generations after them.

And then, rather than leave the stones in the fireplace where they could eventually become burned, thus ending the curses, they would gather them up and scatter them all across the countryside.

Curses have been there since the beginning, it seems.

But over time, they have evolved to be more than just something you do to another person, as if they were weapons.

Many of the stories that we tell on dark nights around campfires have more to do with the implications.

You see, sometimes the horrible tragedies of life refuse to be explained away without the mention of a deadly curse.

When Prince Amedo of Savoy told his father in 1867 that he planned to marry Maria Vittoria Dalpozo, his father was enraged.

Sure, she was of noble birth, but she was no princess and she certainly wasn't worthy of the son of a king.

He was said to have cursed their union.

On the morning of their wedding, Maria's dressmaker committed suicide.

Maria took the hint and found a different dress to wear.

Later, as the bridal party made their way to the palace church in a grand procession, One of the military leaders fell off his horse and died right there in the street.

The wedding wedding procession continued on though and finally reached the palace gates, only to find them shut.

A quick inspection revealed the reason why.

The gatekeeper was found in the gatehouse, lying in a pool of his own blood.

The death toll continued though.

Immediately after the wedding, the best man shot himself in the head.

The wedding party headed to the train station, perhaps in an effort to outrun the curse.

But when they arrived, the man who had drafted their marriage contract had a brain hemorrhage and died on the spot.

He was soon followed by the stationmaster, who somehow got pulled under the royal train carriage and was crushed to death.

The king apparently saw a pattern and recalled the entire party to the palace.

While they were leaving the train, though, one of the noblemen fell beneath the same train car.

A medallion on his chest, most likely a gift from the king, king, was pushed through his skin, stabbing him in the heart.

Maria was the final victim of the curse, they say.

She died in childbirth at the age of 29.

Timur the Lame, or Tamerlane as he was known, was the great-great-grandson of Genghis Khan, taking the throne in 1369.

He was a vicious Mongol warlord and was known for his bloody military campaigns.

He often built pyramids after his victories.

Not with a stone, mind you.

No, he preferred to use the heads of the defeated army, sometimes tens of thousands of them.

He died in 1405, and I imagine more than a few people were elated at the news.

He was buried in an area that we now know as Uzbekistan, and a large jade slab was placed over his tomb as a safeguard.

The stone was inscribed with a word of warning.

When I arise from the grave, it said, the world will tremble.

Some reports say that another message referred to a great battle that would be unleashed should his grave ever be disturbed.

You see where this is going, right?

In 1941, Joseph Stalin sent a team of Soviet archaeologists to look for Timur's tomb.

When the local Uzbek elders heard of the search and planned excavation, they spoke out in protest.

They made reference to an old book that made it clear just how bad of an idea it was to open the tomb.

They spoke of a curse.

They spoke, but no one listened.

On June 21st, 1941, the tomb of Tamerlane was opened and his skull was removed.

The very next day, Hitler's forces crossed into the Soviet Union, beginning the largest German military operation of World War II.

In fact, if the Second World War had a great battle, this was it, hands down.

The body of Tamerlane was studied for over a year while the Soviet Union was torn apart and destroyed by Hitler's army.

All told, the Soviet Union lost 26.6 million men and women to the invasion, more than any country in human history.

It's unclear why, but in November of 1942, The Soviets decided to return Timur's body to the tomb, complete with a proper Islamic burial.

Days later, the German invasion was repelled at Stalingrad, finally pushing them back to the West and marking a turning point in the war.

A turning point, some say, that was caused by the curse.

The idea of the curse is common throughout folklore, and many popular stories use it as a plot device.

The cursed spinning wheel of sleeping beauty, Snow White's cursed apple, and the cursed brothers of the seven ravens all come to mind.

But there's another example in Irish tradition that tops them all, however obscure it might be.

There's an ancient Norse work called The King's Mirror that tells a fascinating story about St.

Patrick.

Patrick, of course, was known for his work spreading Christianity throughout Ireland in the 5th century, but he apparently did not always meet with success on his travels.

According to the account, St.

Patrick once visited a clan that lived in the southern kingdom of Ireland called Ossery.

Like any other visit, Patrick's mission was to bring his message of Christianity to the people there, but it appears that he struck out.

The King's Mirror goes on to describe how the people of the clan made every effort they could to insult both Patrick and the god he represented.

Patrick, to his credit, carried on and tried his best.

He preached the same message he always did and followed the same protocol, meeting with the clan in their place of assembly.

But the people wouldn't hear him out.

Instead, they did something that might seem incredibly odd to our modern ears.

They howled like wolves.

It's not that they laughed at him and it happened to sound like howling.

These people literally howled at St.

Patrick.

The reason was incredibly logical.

The totem, or spirit animal, for this clan happened to be the wolf.

To them, they were just responding to the message of an outside deity with the sounds of their own.

Now, this was pretty unheard of for St.

Patrick, and the fact that this event was recorded in a Norse history book highlights just how unusual it was.

But even more unusual was Patrick's response to this stubborn, insulting clan.

Clearly upset, Patrick stopped speaking and began to pray.

It was said that he asked God to punish the people of the village for their stubbornness.

He wasn't specific, but he asked for some form of affliction that would be communal, that would carry on through the generations as a constant reminder of their disobedience.

According to the story, God actually listened.

It was said that the people of Osri were forever cursed to become the very thing they worshipped.

Wolves.

And this curse followed a very specific set of rules.

Every seven years, one couple from the village of Osseri would be transformed into a wolf.

They would be stuck in this form day and night, year after year, until the next couple would take over.

transforming into wolves themselves.

Part of the curse was said to be how the people of Osseri maintained their human minds while in the form of a wolf.

But although they thought and spoke as humans, they were equally bound to the cravings of their new form,

specifically the craving for human flesh.

In this way, the curse affected everyone, from the man and woman transformed to the people around them who lived in constant fear of being attacked.

Ever since that day, so the legend goes, the people of Ossery

have been cursed.

There's media hype, and then there's grasping at straws.

For some people, Declaring someone or something to be cursed adds an air of mystery and drama.

It's the sexy bit, and sex sells, right?

For example, the Kennedy family story is sad and tragic, but when we add a dash of curse, we elevate it to near-mythic proportions.

Other people, though, really do believe.

Either they've experienced the sting of unexplainable misfortune, or they've watched the lives of people around them crumble for no discernible reason.

The human mind wants answers.

It demands them.

It seeks them out.

People love story, but only the ones with closure.

And that's what curses offer us.

At the end of the day, curses help us make sense of a thing, or a person, or a place that seems to be haunted by misfortune.

They act like a walking stick for people who are having a difficult time staying on the path.

They help us make sense of life.

I can imagine that life in the 6th century in Ireland was incredibly difficult.

And it would make sense that eventually someone would begin to tell stories that tried to explain the harshness of that life.

Stories about a curse, perhaps.

When someone failed to return from battle, or a hunting trip, or even travel between two villages, it was hard to not have all the answers.

Stories about attacks from local werewolves certainly did their part in explaining these disappearances.

But they were just stories, right?

Gerald of Wales was a 12th century historian who recorded something interesting.

He had been sent to Ireland by King Henry II to record the local history there.

According to him, a local priest requested his company while he was visiting.

This priest sat down and told Gerald an amazing tale.

According to the report, he had been traveling near the western border of County Meath, close to what would have been ancient Ossery, and had camped for the night in the woods.

That night, with his fire burning low, someone approached him from the darkness beyond the firelight and spoke.

Obviously, the priest was frightened.

He thought that he had been alone.

But the voice of a man called out to him with great urgency.

The man spoke of his wife.

who was sick at home.

He was worried and wondered if this man of God might come and at least perform last rites for her.

Reluctantly, the priest agreed.

He gathered up his belongings and followed the voice into the woods.

They traveled a short distance until they came to a large hollow tree.

There, the priest noticed two frightening things.

First, There was something or someone lying inside the tree, presumably the sick wife.

Second, though, he realized that the voice was not coming from a man at all, but a wolf.

He was taken aback.

How, he asked the wolf, was he able to speak like a man?

The wolf's answer was simple.

Centuries before, he said, His people had been cursed by a traveling priest, forever doomed to become wolves.

The priest prayed over the man's wife, attended her illness, and the couple was gone by morning,

never to be seen again.

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This episode of lore was researched, written, and produced by me, Aaron Mankey.

Lore is much more than a podcast.

There's a book series in bookstores around the country and online.

And the second season of the Amazon Prime television show was recently released.

Check them both out if you you want more lore in your life.

I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both.

Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic.

You can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one central place, theworldoflore.com slash now.

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Just search for lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

When you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always, thanks for listening.

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