evidence: In multilingual Ireland, people cursed in many tongues. In Ulster, the north-eastern province, Presbyterians uttered curses in Scottish accents using the dialect of Ulster-Scots. Although they shunned Catholic-sounding imprecations that begged the saints to unleash their holy wrath, Presbyterians were not above ‘letting a curse out’, as it was known, using plainer maledictions like ‘God’s curse upon his head’ and ‘bad luck to her’.27 Cursing occurred in English too, which became Ireland’s dominant language during the eighteenth century. [...] Quoted in John D. Brewer with Gareth I. Higgins, Anti-Catholicism in Northern Ireland, 1600–1998: The Mote and the Beam (Basingstoke, 1998), 111.