Sweeney Astray

by Seamus Heaney

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Introduction

  Notes and Acknowledgements

  Begin Reading

  Books by Seamus Heaney

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  This version of Buile Suibhne is based on J. G. O’Keeffe’s bilingual edition, which was published by the Irish Texts Society in 1913. In the meantime, Flann O’Brien gave its central character a second life, as hilarious as it was melancholy, when he made Sweeney part of the apparatus of his novel At Swim-Two-Birds; and a number of other poets and scholars have continued to make translations of different sections of the verse.

  The basis of the 1913 edition is a manuscript written in County Sligo between 1671 and 1674. This manuscript is part of the Stowe collection in the Royal Irish Academy and O’Keeffe believed that, on linguistic grounds, “the text might have been composed at any time between the years 1200 and 1500.” Nevertheless, the thing was already taking shape in the ninth century. O’Keeffe cites a reference in the Book of Aicill, a text dating from the tenth century at the latest, to stories and poems relating to Sweeney’s madness; and other evidence from literary and historical sources leads him to conclude that the Buile Suibhne which we now possess is a development of traditions dating back to the time of the Battle of Moira (A.D. 637), the battle where Sweeney went mad and was transformed, in fulfilment of St. Ronan’s curse, into a bird of the air.

  What we have, then, is a literary creation; unlike Finn McCool or Cuchulain, Sweeney is not a given figure of myth or legend but an historically situated character, although the question of whether he is based upon an historical king called Sweeney has to remain an open one. But the literary imagination which fastened upon him as an image was clearly in the grip of a tension between the newly dominant Christian ethos and the older, recalcitrant Celtic temperament. The opening sections which recount the collision between the peremptory ecclesiastic and the sacral king, and the closing pages of uneasy reconciliation set in St. Moling’s monastery, are the most explicit treatment of this recurrent theme. This alone makes the work a significant one, but it does not exhaust its significance. For example, insofar as Sweeney is also a figure of the artist, displaced, guilty, assuaging himself by his utterance, it is possible to read the work as an aspect of the quarrel between free creative imagination and the constraints of religious, political, and domestic obligation. It is equally possible, in a more opportunistic spirit, to dwell upon Sweeney’s easy sense of cultural affinity with both western Scotland and southern Ireland as exemplary for all men and women in contemporary Ulster, or to ponder the thought that this Irish invention may well have been a development of a British original, vestigially present in the tale of the madman called Alan (Sections 46–50).

  But the work makes its immediate claims more by its local power to affect us than by any general implications we may discover in its pattern. We have to go to King Lear, to Edgar’s jabbering masquerade as poor Tom—itself an interesting parallel to Sweeney’s condition—to find poetry as piercingly exposed to the beauties and severities of the natural world. We may even want to go back further, to the hard weather of the Anglo-Saxon “Seafarer,” or, in order to match the occasional opposite moods of jubilation, to the praise poetry of the early Irish hermits. It was the bareness and durability of the writing here, its double note of relish and penitence, that first tempted me to try my hand at it and gave me the encouragement to persist with stretches of less purely inspired quatrains.

  My first impulse had been to forage for the best lyric moments and to present them as poetic orphans, out of the context of the story. These points of poetic intensity, rather than the overall organization of the narrative, establish the work’s highest artistic levels and offer the strongest invitations to the translator of verse. Yet I gradually felt I had to earn the right to do the high points by undertaking the whole thing: what I was dealing with, after all, is a major work in the canon of medieval literature.

  Nevertheless, a small number of the original stanzas have been excluded (see Notes, here). I occasionally abbreviated the linking narrative and in places have used free verse to render the more heightened prose passages. O’Keeffe has been my guide to the interpretation of the line-by-line meaning, though I have now and again invested the poems with a more subjective tone than they possess in Irish. The stanza forms employed do not reflect the syllabic and assonantal disciplines of the original metres, but since the work could be regarded as a primer of lyric genres—laments, dialogues, litanies, rhapsodies, curses—I trust that the variety of dramatic pitch in the English will compensate to some extent for the loss of the metrical satisfactions in the Irish.

  My fundamental relation with Sweeney, however, is topographical. His kingdom lay in what is now south County Antrim and north County Down, and for over thirty years I lived on the verges of that territory, in sight of some of Sweeney’s places and in earshot of others—Slemish, Rasharkin, Benevenagh, Dunseverick, the Bann, the Roe, the Mournes. When I began work on this version, I had just moved to Wicklow, not all that far from Sweeney’s final resting ground at St. Mullins. I was in a country of woods and hills and remembered that the green spirit of the hedges embodied in Sweeney had first been embodied for me in the persons of a family of tinkers, also called Sweeney, who used to camp in the ditchbacks along the road to the first school I attended. One way or another, he seemed to have been with me from the start.

  S. H.

  NOTES AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The sections of the text are numbered to correspond with J. G. O’Keeffe’s divisions in the Irish Texts Society edition.

  Six stanzas have been dropped from Section 16, seven from Section 40, and one from Section 43. In the first case, the material omitted is historical allusion; in the second, obscurity defeated ingenuity; and in the third, I felt that the English poem came to rest better at the penultimate stanza.

  Section 82 and the first fifteen stanzas of Section 83 have also been excluded. There an exchange occurs between Moling, Mongan, and Sweeney which is essentially a recapitulation and seemed to me to impede the momentum of the conclusion.

  I have anglicized the name of Sweeney’s kingdom, Dal Araidhe, to Dal-Arie, and in dealing with other place names have followed the suggestions in O’Keeffe’s notes and index. In the following cases, where no help was offered, I took the liberty of inventing my own equivalents of the Irish: Kilreagan, Cloonkill, Kilnoo, Drumfree, Drumduff, Kilsooney, Doovey, Creegaille, Glasgally.

  I am grateful for various encouragements and assistances offered by Dr. Deirdre Flanagan, Henry Pearson, Colin Middleton, and Professor Brendan McHugh.

  1 We have already told how Sweeney, son of Colman Cuar and king of Dal-Arie, went astray when he flew out of the battle. This story tells the why and the wherefore of his fits and trips, why he of all men was subject to such frenzies; and it also tells what happened to him afterwards.

  2 There was a certain Ronan Finn in Ireland, a holy and distinguished cleric. He was ascetic and pious, an active missionary, a real Christian soldier. He was a worthy servant of God, one who punished his body for the good of his soul, a shield against vice and the devil’s attacks, a gentle, genial, busy man.

  3 One time when Sweeney was king of Dal-Arie, Ronan was there marking out a church called Killaney. Sweeney was in a place where he heard the clink of Ronan’s bell as he was marking out the
site, so he asked his people what the sound was.

  —It is Ronan Finn, son of Bearach, they said. He is marking out a church in your territory and what you hear is the ringing of his bell.

  Sweeney was suddenly angered and rushed away to hunt the cleric from the church. Eorann, his wife, a daughter of Conn of Ciannacht, tried to hold him back and snatched at the fringe of his crimson cloak, but the silver cloak-fastener broke at the shoulder and sprang across the room. She got the cloak all right but Sweeney had bolted, stark naked, and soon landed with Ronan.

  4 He found the cleric glorifying the King of heaven and earth, in full voice in front of his psalter, a beautiful illuminated book. Sweeney grabbed the book and flung it into the cold depths of a lake nearby, where it sank without trace. Then he took hold of Ronan and was dragging him out through the church when he heard a cry of alarm. The call came from a servant of Congal Claon’s who had come with orders from Congal to summon Sweeney to battle at Moira. He gave a full report of the business and Sweeney went off directly with the servant, leaving the cleric distressed at the loss of his psalter and smarting from such contempt and abuse.

  5 A day and a night passed and then an otter rose out of the lake with the psalter and brought it to Ronan, completely unharmed. Ronan gave thanks to God for that miracle, and cursed Sweeney, saying:

  6

  Sweeney has trespassed on me

  and abused me grievously

  and laid violent hands on me

  to drag me with him from Killarney.

  When Sweeney heard my bell ringing

  he came all of a sudden hurtling

  in terrible rage against me

  to drive me off and banish me.

  Outrage like that, and eviction

  from the first place I had chosen,

  were too much for me to bear.

  Therefore, God answered my prayer.

  My hand was locked in Sweeney’s hand

  until he heard the loud command

  to battle: Come away and join

  arms with Donal on Moira’s plain.

  So I offered thanks and praise

  for the merciful release,

  that unhoped-for, timely summons

  to arm and join the high prince.

  From far off he approached the field

  that drove his mind and senses wild.

  He shall roam Ireland, mad and bare.

  He shall find death on the point of a spear.

  The psalter that he grabbed and tore

  from me and cast into deep water—

  Christ brought it back without a spot.

  The psalter stayed immaculate.

  A day and a night in brimming waters,

  my speckled book was none the worse!

  Through the will of God the Son

  an otter gave me it again.

  This psalter that he profaned

  I bequeath with a malediction:

  that it bode evil for Colman’s race

  the day this psalter meets their eyes.

  Bare to the world, here came Sweeney

  to harass and to harrow me:

  therefore, it is God’s decree

  bare to the world he’ll always be.

  Eorann, daughter of Conn of Ciannacht,

  tried to hold him by his cloak.

  Eorann has my blessing for this

  but Sweeney lives under my curse.

  7 After that, Ronan came to Moira to make peace between Donal, son of Aodh, and Congal Claon, son of Scannlan, but he did not succeed. Nevertheless, the cleric’s presence was taken as a seal and guarantee of the rules of the battle; they made agreements that no killing would be allowed except between those hours they had set for beginning and ending the fight each day. Sweeney, however, would continually violate every peace and truce which the cleric had ratified, slaying a man each day before the sides were engaged and slaying another each evening when the combat was finished. Then, on the day fixed for the great battle, Sweeney was in the field before everyone else.

  8

  He was dressed like this:

  next his white skin, the shimmer of silk;

  and his satin girdle around him;

  and his tunic, that reward of service

  and gift of fealty from Congal,

  was like this—

  crimson, close-woven,

  bordered in gemstones and gold,

  a rustle of sashes and loops,

  the studded silver gleaming,

  the slashed hem embroidered in points.

  He had an iron-shod spear in each hand,

  a shield of mottled horn on his back,

  a gold-hilted sword at his side.

  9 He marched out like that until he encountered Ronan with eight psalmists from his community. They were blessing the armies, sprinkling them with holy water, and they sprinkled Sweeney with the rest. Sweeney thought they had done it just to mock him, so he lifted one of his spears, hurled it, and killed one of Ronan’s psalmists in a single cast. He made another throw with the second spear at the cleric himself, so that it pierced the bell that hung from his neck, and the shaft sprang off into the air. Ronan burst out:

  10

  My curse fall on Sweeney

  for his great offence.

  His smooth spear profaned

  my bell’s holiness,

  cracked bell hoarding grace

  since the first saint rang it—

  it will curse you to the trees,

  bird-brain among branches.

  Just as the spear-shaft broke

  and sprang into the air

  may the mad spasms strike

  you, Sweeney, forever.

  My fosterling lies slain,

  your spear-point has been reddened:

  to finish off this bargain

  you shall die at spear-point.

  Should the steadfast tribe of Owen

  try to oppose me,

  Uradhran and Telle

  will visit them with decay.

  Uradhran and Telle

  have visited them with decay.

  Until time dies away

  my curse attend you.

  My blessing on Eorann,

  that she flourish and grow lovely.

  Through everlasting pain

  my curse fall on Sweeney.

  11 There were three great shouts as the herded armies clashed and roared out their war cries like stags. When Sweeney heard these howls and echoes assumed into the travelling clouds and amplified through the vaults of space, he looked up and he was possessed by a dark rending energy.

  His brain convulsed,

  his mind split open.

  Vertigo, hysteria, lurchings

  and launchings came over him,

  he staggered and flapped desperately,

  he was revolted by the thought of known places

  and dreamed strange migrations.

  His fingers stiffened,

  his feet scuffled and flurried,

  his heart was startled,

  his senses were mesmerized,

  his sight was bent,

  the weapons fell from his hands

  and he levitated in a frantic cumbersome motion

  like a bird of the air.

  And Ronan’s curse was fulfilled.

  12 His feet skimmed over the grasses so lightly he never unsettled a dewdrop and all that day he was a hurtling visitant of plain and field, bare mountain and bog, thicket and marshland, and there was no hill or hollow, no plantation or forest in Ireland that he did not appear in that day; until he reached Ros Bearaigh in Glen Arkin, where he hid in a yew tree in the glen.

  13 Donal, son of Aodh, won the battle that day. A kinsman of Sweeney’s called Aongus the Stout survived and came fleeing with a band of his people into Glen Arkin. They were wondering about Sweeney because they had not seen him alive after the fight and he had not been counted among the casualties. They were discussing this and deciding that Ronan’s curse had something to do with it whe
n Sweeney spoke out of the yew:

  14

  Soldiers, come here.

  You are from Dal-Arie,

  and the man you are looking for

  roosts in his tree.

  The life God grants me now

  is bare and strait;

  I am haggard, womanless,

  and cut off from music.

  So I am here at Ros Bearaigh.

  Ronan has brought me low,

  God has exiled me from myself—

  soldiers, forget the man you knew.

  15 When the men heard Sweeney’s recitation they knew him at once and tried to persuade him to trust them. He said he never would, and as they closed round the tree, he launched himself nimbly and lightly and flew to Kilreagan in Tyrconnell, where he perched on the old tree by the church.

  It turned out that Donal, son of Aodh, and his army were there after the battle, and when they saw the madman lighting in the tree, a crowd of them ringed and besieged it. They began shouting out guesses about the creature in the branches; one would say it was a woman, another that it was a man, until Donal himself recognized him and said:

  —It is Sweeney, the king of Dal-Arie, the man that Ronan cursed on the day of the battle. That is a good man up there, he said, and if he wanted wealth and store he would be welcome to them, if only he would trust us. I am upset that Congal’s people are reduced to this, for he and I had strong ties before we faced the battle. But then, Sweeney was warned by Colmcille when he went over with Congal to ask the king of Scotland for an army to field against me. Then Donal uttered the lay: