or
a south-west blow on ye, And blister you all o’er.
And, generally speaking, we may say that what makes cursing terrible and appalling to the ears on which it falls is not any reference to the gods that it may contain—for such references maybe absent—but the fear or horror the man inspires. If he inspires none, his curses go unregarded. If they do terrify, it is because they are felt to have some power. Precisely the same difference, and for precisely the same reason, obtains in the case of witchcraft and magic. Some who practise it are feared, others are not; and the reason is that some are believed to have the power to do the mischief, and others not. But if witchcraft and cursing are both terrible because of the fear they inspire and the power they imply, and if so far they resemble each other, or even possibly have a common psychological origin, they soon begin to follow different lines of evolution. The essence of cursing is that it is open and loud; and, except when taken up into religion, is not ceremonialized or formalized; whereas the essence of magic is that it is secret in what it does, and its ‘singing’ is a repeated or rhythmical muttering in a low voice. The mere words, ‘May your heart be rent asunder,’ may be a curse or a spell; and, in either case, if they are feared, power is attributed to the person who utters them. Psychologically, it is probable that belief in the power is due to the fear that is felt. But when the belief has been established that a certain person possesses the power, then the belief in the power in its turn engenders fear.
The belief is that the magician or witch has the power to do things. In Macbeth the first witch says:
But in a sieve I’ll thither sail; And, like a rat without a tail, I’ll do, I’ll do, and I’ll do.
In the Romance languages there is a series of words for magic and witchcraft, going back to the Latin facio, all expressing this idea of ‘I’ll do, and I’ll do’, and implying that the witch has the power to do—the Middle Latin factura, Italian fattura, Old French faiture, &c. And in the Indo-European languages there are several sets of words for magic and witchcraft, all expressing this same idea, and indicating that it goes back to the earliest Indo-European times. One set running through Sanskrit, Lithuanian, and Old Slavonic implies, as the Sanskrit kṛtyâ shows, that magic is ‘action’ or ‘doing’. The Old Norse görningar, ‘sorceries or witchcraft,’ literally means ‘doing’; and in Old Slavonic the word for magic (po-tvorü) is derived from a verb meaning ‘to do’. As illustrating the belief that the witch has power, I may refer to Canidia’s words in the Epodes (xvii. 77):
et polo deripere Lunam vocibus possim meis, possim crematos excitare mortuos;
or to Medea’s in Ovid (Met. vii. 206):
iubeoque et mugire solum, manesque exire sepulcris;
and (Rem. Am. 253):