Sweeney Astray

by Seamus Heaney

  among bushes.

  Sweeney:

  I come from the Bush myself.

  I am Sweeney,

  son of Colman. Like yourself,

  outcast, shifty.

  48 After that, they did confide in each other and shared their life stories. Sweeney said to the madman:

  —Tell me about yourself.

  —I am a landowner’s son, said the mad Briton, a native of this country, and my name is Alan.

  —Tell me, Sweeney asked, what made you mad?

  —It is simple. Once upon a time there were two kings in this country, struggling for the kingship. Their names were Eochaidh and Cuagu. Eochaidh was the better king and I am one of his people. Anyhow, the issue was to be decided at a great muster where there was to be a battle. I laid solemn obligations on each of my chief’s people that none was to come to the battle unless he was arrayed in silk. I did this so that they would be magnificent, outstanding beyond the others in pomp and panoply. But, for doing that, the hosts cursed me with three howls of malediction that sent me astray and frightened, the way you see me.

  49 In the same way he asked Sweeney what drove him to madness.

  —The words of Ronan, said Sweeney. At the battle of Moira he cursed me in front of the armies so that I sprang out of the battle and have been wandering and fleeing ever since.

  —O Sweeney, said Alan, since we have trusted each other, let us now be guardians to each other.

  Whoever of us is the first to hear

  the cry of a heron from a lough’s blue-green waters

  or the clear note of a cormorant

  or the flight of a woodcock off a branch

  or the wheep of a plover disturbed in its sleep

  or the crackle of feet in withered branches,

  or whoever of us is the first to see

  the shadow of a bird above the wood,

  let him warn the other.

  Let us move always

  with the breadth of two trees between us.

  And if one of us hears any of these things

  or anything like them,

  let both of us scatter immediately.

  50 So they went about like that for a year. At the end of the year Alan said to Sweeney:

  —To-day is the day we must part, for the end of my life has come, and I will go where I am destined to meet my death.

  —How will you die? Sweeney asked.

  —That is simple, Alan said. I will proceed now to the waterfall at Doovey, where a blast of wind will unbalance me and pitch me into the waterfall, so that I’ll be drowned. Afterwards, I will be buried in the churchyard of a saint. And I’ll go to heaven. And now, Sweeney, said Alan, tell me what your own fate will be.

  Sweeney told him what this story goes on to tell and they parted. The Briton set out for the waterfall and when he reached it he was drowned in it.

  51 Then Sweeney came to Ireland, reaching the plain of Moylinny, in Antrim, as the evening was drawing on. When he realized where he was, he said:

  —This was always a good plain, and I was here once with a good man. That was Scannlan’s son, my friend Congal Claon. One day here I said to Congal that I wanted to go to another lord and master because the rewards I got from him were too small. To persuade me to stay with him, Congal immediately gave me a hundred and fifty lovely horses, and his own brown steed into the bargain; and a hundred and fifty flashing swords, hafted in tusks; fifty servants and fifty servant girls; a tunic made of cloth-of-gold, and a magnificent girdle of chequered silk.

  Then Sweeney recited this poem:

  52

  Now my bare skin feels

  night falling on Moylinny,

  the plain where Congal lived.

  Now in my memory

  I see Congal and me

  riding across the plain

  deep in conversation,

  headed for Drum Lurgan.

  I am saying to the king:

  —The services I give

  are not being rewarded.

  And I threaten I will leave.

  What does the king do then?

  He gives me in their hundreds

  horses, bridles, swords, foreign

  captives, girl attendants.

  And my great chestnut steed,

  the best that grazed or galloped,

  his cloth-of-gold tunic,

  his girdle of silk plaits.

  So what plain matches this plain?

  Is it the plain of Meath

  or the plain of Airgeadros

  or Moyfevin with its crosses?

  Moylurg or Moyfea,

  the lovely plain of Connacht,

  the Liffey banks, Bannside,

  or the plain of Muirhevna?

  I have seen all of them,

  north, south, east, and west,

  but never saw the equal

  of this ground in Antrim.

  53 When he had made that poem Sweeney came on to Glen Bolcain, where he went wandering freely until he met with a madwoman. He shied and ran away from her, yet divining somehow that she too was simple-minded, he stopped in his tracks and turned to her. With that, she shied and ran away from him.

  —Alas, God, Sweeney said, life is a misery. I scare away from her and she scares away from me. And in Glen Bolcain, of all places!

  Then he began:

  54

  Whoever stirs up enmity

  should never have been born;

  may every bitter man and woman

  be barred at the gate of heaven.

  If three conspire and combine

  one will backbite or complain

  as I complain, going torn

  by briar and sharp blackthorn.

  First, madwoman flees from man.

  Then, something stranger even:

  barefoot, in his bare skin,

  man runs away from woman.

  In November, wild ducks fly.

  From those dark days until May

  let us forage, nest and hide

  in ivy in the brown wood

  and hear behind birds’ singing

  water sounds in Glen Bolcain,

  its fast streams, all hush and jabber,

  its islands on forking rivers,

  its hazel trees and holly bowers,

  its acorns and leaves and briars,

  its nuts, its sharp-tasting sloes,

  its sweet, cool-fleshed berries:

  and under trees, its hounds coursing,

  its loud stags bellowing,

  its waters’ clear endless fall—

  what enmity is possible?

  55 After that, Sweeney went to the house where his wife, Eorann, was lodging with her retinue of maidservants. He stood at the outer door of the house and spoke to his former queen:

  —Here you are, Eorann, laid in the lap of luxury, and still there is no lap for me to lie in.

  —That is how it is, Eorann said, but do come in.

  —Indeed I will not, said Sweeney, in case the army traps me in the house.

  —Well, said the woman, it seems your mind has not got any better, and since you do not want to stop with us, why don’t you go away and leave us in peace? There are people here who knew you when you were in your right mind; it would be an embarrassment if they were to see you like this.

  —Isn’t that terrible, said Sweeney. Now I know it. It is fatal to trust a woman. And I was generous to this one. She is spurning me now but I would have been the man of the moment if I had come back that day when I slew Oilill Caedach, the king of Ui Faolain.

  And with that he said:

  56

  Any man a woman falls for,

  however handsome, should beware.

  Mad Sweeney is the proof,

  cast off by his first love.

  And any trusting man must stay

  on guard for their treachery

  because betrayal like Eorann’s

  is second nature in a woman.

  Gullible and open-handed,

  s
traightforward, wide-eyed,

  I gave steeds and herds away,

  filled her pastures in a day.

  In the thick of fighting men

  I could more than hold my own:

  when the battle cry was sounded

  I handled thirty single-handed.

  It was Congal’s right to ask for

  a warrior to champion Ulster:

  —Who among you will take on

  the fighter king of Ui Faolain?

  Oilill was a berserk giant,

  a shield and spear in either hand,

  so overbearing in his stride

  for a while our ranks were daunted.

  But when I spoke at Congal’s side

  it was not to whinge or backslide:

  —Though Oilill is their strongest bastion,

  I will hold the line against him.

  I left him shortened by a head

  and left the torso, overjoyed,

  and left five other princes dead

  before I stopped to wipe my blade.

  57 With that, Sweeney rose lightly and stealthily and went hopping airily from peak to peak, from one hill to the next, until he reached Mourne in the south of Ulster. He rested there, saying:

  —This is a good place for a madman, but it is no place for corn or milk or food. And though it is a lovely, lofty station, it is still uncomfortable and uneasy. There is no shelter here from the storm or the shower.

  And then he uttered these words:

  58

  The Mournes are cold to-night,

  my station is desolate:

  no milk or honey in this land

  of snowfields, gusting wind.

  In a sharp-branched holly tree,

  exhausted, nothing on me,

  chilled to the bone, every night

  I camp on the mountain summit.

  Frost casts me like an effigy

  unless I shift and break free

  when gales from the plain of Leinster

  fan me alive, a bleak ember

  dreaming, when summer dies

  round Hallowe’en and All-Hallows,

  another move to my old ground—

  the clear springs of Glen Bolcain.

  Astray no more east or west,

  blizzards whipping my bare face,

  not shivering in some drifted den,

  a starved, pinched, raving madman,

  but sheltered in that lovely glen,

  my winter harbour, my haven,

  my refuge from the bare heath,

  my royal fort, my king’s rath.

  All night there I glean and raid

  and forage in the oak wood.

  My hands feel out leaf and rind,

  roots, windfalls on the ground,

  they comb through matted watercress

  and grope among the bog-berries,

  brooklime, sorrel, damp moss,

  wild garlic, raspberries,

  apples, hazel-nuts, acorns,

  haws of the sharp, jaggy hawthorn,

  and blackberries, floating weed,

  the whole store of the oak wood.

  Keep me here, Christ, far away

  from open ground and flat country.

  Let me suffer the cold of glens.

  I dread the cold space of plains.

  59 The next morning Sweeney started again. He passed Moyfevin and the clear, green-wavering Shannon; he passed the inviting slopes of Aughty, the spreading pastures of Loughrea, the delightful banks of the River Suck, and landed on the shores of broad Lough Ree. He spent that night in the fork of Bile Tiobradain, which was one of his favourite hide-outs in the country. It was Creegaille, in the east of Connacht.

  Great sorrow and misery descended on him and he said:

  —Indeed I have suffered great trouble and distress. It was cold in the Mournes last night and it is no better to-night in the fork of Bile Tiobradain.

  60 It was snowing that night, and as fast as the snow fell, it was frozen. So he said:

  —I have endured purgatories since the feathers grew on me. And still there is no respite. I realize, he said, that even if it were to mean my death, it would be better to trust my people than to endure these woes forever.

  Then he recited the poem, proclaiming aloud his woes:

  61

  Almighty God, I deserved this,

  my cut feet, my drained face,

  winnowed by a sheer wind

  and miserable in my mind.

  Last night I lay in Mourne

  plastered in wet; cold rain poured.

  To-night, in torment, in Glasgally

  I am crucified in the fork of a tree.

  I who endured unflinchingly

  through long nights and long days

  since the feathers penned my frame

  foresee nothing but the same.

  Hard weather has withered me,

  blizzards have buried me.

  As I wince here in cutting wind

  Glen Bolcain’s heather haunts my mind.

  Unsettled, panicky, astray,

  I course over the whole country

  from Liffey to Lower Bann,

  from Bannside to the banks of Lagan;

  then over Rathmore to Roscommon,

  and fields that lie around Cruachan,

  above Moylurg’s level plain

  and the brow of bushy Fews Mountain.

  Or else I make a tough migration

  to the Knockmealdown mountains;

  or from Glasgally, a long glide

  eastward to a louth hillside.

  All this is hard to thole, Lord!

  Still without bed or board,

  crouching to graze on cress,

  drinking cold water from rivers.

  Alarmed out of the autumn wood,

  whipped by whins, flecked with blood,

  running wild among wolf-packs,

  shying away with the red stag.

  Son of God, have mercy on us!

  Never to hear a human voice!

  To sleep naked every night

  up there in the highest thickets,

  to have lost my proper shape and looks,

  a mad scuttler on mountain peaks,

  a derelict doomed to loneliness:

  Son of God, have mercy on us!

  62 —All the same, Sweeney said, even if Donal, son of Aodh, were to kill me, I will still go to Dal-Arie and trust to the mercy of my own people. If the mill-hag had not duped me into that bout of leaping, I would still be sane enough.

  63 Then a glimmer of reason came back to him and he set out for his own country, ready to settle there and entrust himself to the people.

  Ronan heard of Sweeney’s return to his senses and his decision to go back among his own, and cried out:

  —I beseech you, Lord, that the persecutor may not come near the church to torment it again; I beseech you, do not relent in your vengeance or ease his affliction until he is sundered body from soul in his death-swoon. Remember that you struck him for an example, a warning to tyrants that you and your people were sacred and not to be lightly dishonoured or outraged.

  64 God answered Ronan’s prayer. When Sweeney was out on the uplands of the Fews he halted, stalk still: a strange apparition rose before him at midnight. Bleeding headless torsos and disembodied heads—five scraggy, goat-bearded heads—screamed and bounced this way and that over the road. When he got among them, they were talking to each other.

  —He is a madman, said the first head.

  —A madman from Ulster, said the second.

  —Follow him well, said the third.

  —May the pursuit be long, said the fourth.

  —Until he reaches the sea, said the fifth.

  They rose in a flock, coming for him, but he soared away in front, skimming from thicket to thicket; and no matter how wide the glen that opened before him, he bounded from edge to edge, from the top of one hill to the top of the next.

  65

  The heads were pursuing hi
m,

  lolling and baying,

  snapping and yelping,

  whining and squealing.

  They nosed at his calves and his thighs,

  they breathed on his shoulder,

  they nuzzled the back of his neck,

  they went bumping off tree-trunks and rock-face,

  they spouted and plunged like a waterfall,

  until he gave them the slip and escaped

  in a swirling tongue of low cloud.

  66 He had lost them, goat-head and dog-head and the whole terrifying pack he had sensed there. But his previous wandering and flying were nothing compared with what he suffered now, for he was startled into a fit which lasted six weeks until he perched one night in the top of a tree, on the summit of Slieve Eidhneach. In the morning he began lamenting:

  67

  My dark night has come round again.

  The world goes on but I return

  to haunt myself. I freeze and burn.

  I am the bare figure of pain.

  Frost crystals and level ice,

  the scourging snow, the male-voiced storm

  assist at my requiem.

  My hearth goes cold, my fire dies.