Curses lifted on archive and library users

1. Instead of having to forge the special card issued to Genuine Researchers, anyone can now get into archives pertaining to the Ministry of Culture with a passport or other state ID. Edmund Lester Pearson’s old librarian ( “No person younger than 20 years … is on any pretext to enter the Library. Be suspicious of Women.“) will be twitching in his grave to hear of bibliotaphes thus undone.
2. Despite the publication in 1979 of Wayne A Wiegand’s The history of a hoax: Edmund Lester Pearson, John Cotton Dana, and “The old librarian’s lmanack”, many subsequent authors apparently remain unaware that The old librarian’s almanack is not a reprint of an 18th century original but a charming and blatant forgery. The following made-up curse from the “Library of the Popish Monastery of San Pedro at Barcelona” has spread particularly far and wide:
   

   For him that stealeth a Book from this Library, let it change to a Serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with Palsy, and all his Members blasted. Let him languish in Pain, crying aloud for Mercy and let there be no surcease to his Agony till he sink to Dissolution. Let Book-worms gnaw his Entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his final Punishment let the Flames of Hell consume him for ever and aye.

   Victims of the hoax include Wikipedia, Nicholas Basbanes (A gentle madness: bibliophiles, bibliomanes, and the eternal passion for books), a Master of Library and Information Studies, and Anatole Broyard (in Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan, A passion for books). Plenty of gulls on the net, too.

   I have been to the library in question and can vouch for the curse never having been present either in theory or in practice. The place isn’t even particularly Popish.

   [All reminiscent of the beastly bookseller of Barcelona, of course.]

Trevor @ 1 December 2006 7:00 PM

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