Curse of Scotland Gurney Benham's book about playing cards, in describing the game of Pope Joan he gives his own explanation for why this card is known as the Curse of Scotland: "The crown of Scotland contained only nine stones, as they never could afford a tenth". Eric Partridge's "Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang" considers: “the various theories are as interesting as they are unconvincing”. "Collins Encyclopedia of Scotland" says for "Curse of Scotland" "This is usually taken to be the nine of diamonds playing card, though explanations differ". The 19th century Tarot of Marseilles is one of the standard designs for tarot
Diamonds (suit) diamond typically has a diamond shape, a parallelogram with four equal sides, placed on one of its points. The sides are sometimes slightly rounded and the four vertices placed in a square, making the sign look like an astroid. Normally diamonds are red in colour. They can however be depicted in blue, which is the case for example in bridge (where it is one of the two minor suits along with Clubs). The following gallery shows the diamonds from a 52-card deck of French playing cards. Not shown is the Knight of Diamonds used in the tarot card games: The