Sweeney Astray Page 3
—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:
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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—
>
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:
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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:
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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,
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.