Sweeney Astray Read online

  —Do you remember, lady, the great love we shared when we were together? Life is still a pleasure to you but not to me.

  And this exchange ensued between them:

  32

  Sweeney:

  Restless as wingbeats

  of memory, I hover

  above you, and your bed

  still warm from your lover.

  Remember when you played

  the promise-game with me?

  Sun and moon would have died

  if ever you lost your Sweeney!

  But you have broken trust,

  unmade it like a bed—

  not mine in the dawn frost

  but yours, that he invaded.

  Eorann:

  Welcome here, my crazy dote,

  my first and last and favourite!

  I am easy now, and yet I wasted

  at the cruel news of your being bested.

  Sweeney:

  There’s more welcome for the prince

  who preens for you and struts

  to those amorous banquets

  where Sweeney feasted once.

  Eorann:

  All the same, I would prefer

  a hollow tree and Sweeney bare—

  that sweetest game we used to play—

  to banqueting with him to-day.

  I tell you, Sweeney, if I were given

  the pick of all in earth and Ireland

  I’d rather go with you, live sinless

  and sup on water and watercress.

  Sweeney:

  But cold and hard as stone

  lies Sweeney’s path

  through the beds of Lisardowlin.

  There I go to earth

  in panic, starved and bare,

  a rickle of skin and bones.

  I am yours no longer.

  And you are another man’s.

  Eorann:

  My poor tormented lunatic!

  When I see you like this it makes me sick

  your cheek gone pale, your skin all scars,

  ripped and scored by thorns and briars.

  Sweeney:

  And yet I hold no grudge,

  my gentle one.

  Christ ordained my bondage

  and exhaustion.

  Eorann:

  I wish we could fly away together,

  be rolling stones, birds of a feather:

  I’d swoop to pleasure you in flight

  and huddle close on the roost at night.

  Sweeney:

  I have gone north and south.

  One night I was in the Mournes.

  I have wandered as far as the Bann mouth

  and Kilsooney.

  33 They had no sooner finished than the army swept into the camp from every side, and as usual, he was away in a panic, never stopping until twilight, when he arrived at Ros Bearaigh—that church where he first halted after the battle of Moira—and again he went into the yew tree of the church. Murtagh McEarca was erenach of the church at the time and his wife was passing the yew when by chance she caught sight of the madman. Recognizing Sweeney, she said:

  —Come down out of the yew. I know you are king of Dal-Arie, and there is nobody here but myself, a woman on her own.

  That is what she said, though she hoped to beguile him somehow into a trap and catch him.

  —Indeed I shall not come down, said Sweeney, for Lynchseachan and his wife might come upon me. But am I not hard to recognize nowadays?

  And he uttered these stanzas:

  34

  Only your hawk eye

  could pick me out

  who was cock of the walk once

  in Dal-Arie—

  the talk of Ireland

  for looks and bearing.

  Since the shock of battle

  I’m a ghost of myself.

  So mind your husband

  and your house, good woman,

  but I can’t stay. We shall meet again

  on Judgement Day.

  35 He cleared the tree lightly and nimbly and went on his way until he reached the old tree in Rasharkin, which was one of the three hide-outs he had in his own country, the others being at Teach mic Ninnedha and Cluan Creamha. He lodged undiscovered there for six weeks in the yew tree but he was detected in the end and the nobles of Dal-Arie held a meeting to decide who should go to apprehend him. Lynchseachan was the unanimous choice and he agreed to go.

  Off he went to the tree and Sweeney was there, perched on a branch above him.

  —It is a pity, Sweeney, he said, that you ended up like this, like any bird of the air, without food or drink or clothes, you that went in silk and satin and rode foreign steeds in their matchless harness. Do you remember your train, the lovely gentle women, the many young men and their hounds, the retinue of craftsmen? Do you remember the assemblies under your sway? Do you remember the cups and goblets and carved horns that flowed with pleasant heady drink? It is a pity to find you like any poor bird flitting from one waste ground to the next.

  —Stop now, said Sweeney, it was my destiny. But have you any news for me about my country?

  —I have indeed, said Lynchseachan, for your father is dead.

  —That is a seizure, he said.

  —Your mother is dead too, said the young man.

  —There’ll be pity from nobody now, he said.

  —And your brother, said Lynchseachan.

  —My side bleeds for that, said Sweeney.

  —Your daughter is dead, said Lynchseachan.

  —The heart’s needle is an only daughter, said Sweeney.

  —And your son who used to call you daddy, said Lynchseachan.

  —Indeed, he said, that is the drop that fells me to the ground.

  After that, Sweeney and Lynchseachan made up this poem between them:

  36

  Lynchseachan:

  Sweeney from the high mountains,

  blooded swordsman, veteran:

  for Christ’s sake, your judge and saviour,

  speak to me, your foster-brother.

  If you hear me, listen. Listen,

  my royal lord, my great prince,

  for I bring you, gently as I can,

  bad news from your homeland.

  You left behind a dead kingdom.

  Therefore I had to come

  with tidings of a dead brother,

  a father dead, a dead mother.

  Sweeney:

  If my gentle mother’s dead, I face

  a harder exile from my place;

  yet she had cooled in love of me

  and love that’s cooled is worse than pity.

  The son whose father’s lately dead

  kicks the trace and lives unbridled.

  His pain’s a branch bowed down with nuts.

  A dead brother is a wounded side.

  Lynchseachan:

  Things the world already knows

  I still must break to you as news:

  thin as you are, and bare, your wife

  pined after you, and died of grief.

  Sweeney:

  A household when the wife is gone,

  a boat that’s rudderless in storm;

  it is pens of feathers next the skin;

  a widower at his bleak kindling.

  Lynchseachan:

  Sorrow accumulates: heartbreak,

  keenings, wailings fill the air.

  But all of it’s a fist round smoke

  now you are without a sister.

  Sweeney:

  No common wisdom I invoke

  can stanch the wound made by that stroke.

  A sister’s love is still, unselfish,

  like sunlight mild upon a ditch.

  Lynchseachan:

  Our north is colder than it was,

  calves are kept in from their cows

  since your daughter and sister’s son,

  who both loved you, were stricken down.

  Sweeney:

  My faithful hound, my faithful nephew—
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  no bribe could buy their love of me.

  But you’ve unstitched the rent of sorrow.

  The heart’s needle is an only daughter.

  Lynchseachan:

  This telling what I would keep back

  wounds me to the very quick!

  In Dal-Arie, everyone

  mourns the death of your son.

  Sweeney:

  Ah! Now the gallows trap has opened

  that drops the strongest to the ground!

  A haunted father’s memory

  of his small boy calling Daddy!

  This is a blow I cannot stand.

  This sorrow is the one command

  I must obey. His death fells me,

  defenceless, harmless, out of the tree.

  Lynchseachan:

  Sweeney, now you are in my hands,

  I can heal these father’s wounds:

  your family has fed no grave,

  all your people are alive.

  Calm yourself. Come to. Rest.

  Come home east. Forget the west.

  Admit, Sweeney, you have come far

  from where your heart’s affections are.

  Woods and forests and wild deer,

  now these things delight you more

  than sleeping in your eastern dun

  on a bed of feather down.

  Near a quick mill-pond, your perch

  on a dark green holly branch

  means more to you than any feast

  among the brightest and the best.

  Harp music in the breasting hills

  would not soothe you: you would still

  strain to hear from the oak-wood

  the brown stag belling to the herd.

  Swifter than the wind in glens,

  once the figure of a champion,

  a legend now, and a madman—

  your exile’s over, Sweeney. Come.

  37 When Sweeney heard the news of his only son he fell from the yew tree and Lynchseachan caught him and put manacles on him. Then he told him that all his people were alive, and escorted him back to the assembled nobles of Dal-Arie. They produced locks and fetters in which they shackled Sweeney and left him under Lynchseachan’s supervision for the next six weeks. During that time the nobles of the province kept visiting him, and at the end of it, his sense and memory came back to him and he felt himself restored to his old shape and manner. So they took the tackle off him and he was back to his former self, the man they had known as king.

  After that, Sweeney was quartered in Lynchseachan’s bedroom. Then harvest time came round and one day Lynchseachan went with his people to reap. Sweeney, shut in the bedroom, was left in the care of the mill-hag, who was warned not to speak to him. All the same, she did speak to him, asking him to relate some of his adventures when he was in his state of madness.

  —A curse on your mouth, hag, said Sweeney, for your talk is dangerous. God will not allow me to go mad again.

  —It was your insult to Ronan that put you mad, said the hag.

  —This is hateful, he said, to have to put up with your treachery and trickery.

  —It is no treachery, only the truth.

  And Sweeney said:

  38

  Sweeney:

  Hag, did you come here from your mill

  to spring me over wood and hill?

  Is it to be a woman’s ploy

  and treachery send me astray?

  The Hag:

  Sweeney, your sorrows are well known,

  and I am not the treacherous one:

  the miracles of holy Ronan

  maddened and drove you among madmen.

  Sweeney:

  If I were king and I wish I were

  again the king who held sway here,

  instead of the banquet and ale-mug

  I’d give you a fist on the mouth, hag.

  39 —Now listen, woman, he said, if you only knew the hard times I have been through. Many’s the dreadful leap I have leaped from hill and fort and land and valley.

  —For God’s sake, said the hag, let me see one of those leaps now. Show me how you did it when you were off in your madness.

  With that, he bounded over the bed-rail and lit on the end of the bench.

  —Sure I could do that leap myself, said the hag, and she did it.

  Then Sweeney took another leap out through the skylight of the lodge.

  —I could do that too, said the hag, and leaped it, there and then.

  Anyhow, this is the way it ended up: Sweeney went lifting over five cantreds of Dal-Arie that day until he arrived at Gleann na n-Eachtach in Feegile and she was on his heels the whole way. When he took a rest there, in the top of an ivy-bunch, the hag perched on another tree beside him.

  It was the end of the harvest season and Sweeney heard a hunting-call from a company in the skirts of the wood.

  —This will be the outcry of the Ui Faolain coming to kill me, he said. I slew their king at Moira and this host is out to avenge him.

  He heard the stag bellowing and he made a poem in which he praised aloud all the trees of Ireland, and rehearsed some of his own hardships and sorrows, saying:

  40

  Suddenly this bleating

  and belling in the glen!

  The little timorous stag

  like a scared musician

  startles my heartstrings

  with high homesick refrains—

  deer on my lost mountains,

  flocks out on the plain.

  The bushy leafy oak tree

  is highest in the wood,

  the forking shoots of hazel

  hide sweet hazel-nuts.

  The alder is my darling,

  all thornless in the gap,

  some milk of human kindness

  coursing in its sap.

  The blackthorn is a jaggy creel

  stippled with dark sloes;

  green watercress in thatch on wells

  where the drinking blackbird goes.

  Sweetest of the leafy stalks,

  the vetches strew the pathway;

  the oyster-grass is my delight,

  and the wild strawberry.

  Low-set clumps of apple trees

  drum down fruit when shaken;

  scarlet berries clot like blood

  on mountain rowan.

  Briars curl in sideways,

  arch a stickle back,

  draw blood and curl up innocent

  to sneak the next attack.

  The yew tree in each churchyard

  wraps night in its dark hood.

  Ivy is a shadowy

  genius of the wood.

  Holly rears its windbreak,

  a door in winter’s face;

  life-blood on a spear-shaft

  darkens the grain of ash.

  Birch tree, smooth and blessed,

  delicious to the breeze,

  high twigs plait and crown it

  the queen of trees.

  The aspen pales

  and whispers, hesitates:

  a thousand frightened scuts

  race in its leaves.

  But what disturbs me most

  in the leafy wood

  is the to and fro and to and fro

  of an oak rod.

  Ronan was dishonoured,

  he rang his cleric’s bell:

  my spasm and outrage

  brought curse and miracle.

  And noble Congal’s armour,

  his tunic edged in gold,

  swathed me in doomed glory

  with omens in each fold.

  His lovely tunic marked me

  in the middle of the rout,

  the host pursuing, shouting:

  —The one in the gold coat.

  Get him, take him live or dead,

  every man fall to.

  Draw and quarter, pike

  and spit him, none will blame you.

  Still the horsemen followed

  across the north of Down,r />
  my back escaping nimbly

  from every javelin thrown.

  As if I had been cast

  by a spearsman, I flew high,

  my course a whisper in the air,

  a breeze flicking through ivy.

  I overtook the startled fawn,

  kept step with his fleet step,

  I caught, I rode him lightly—

  from peak to peak we leapt,

  mountain after mountain,

  a high demented spree

  from Inishowen south,

  and south, as far as Galtee.

  From Galtee up to Liffey

  I was swept along and driven

  on through bitter twilight

  to the slopes of Benn Bulben.