Sweeney Astray Read online

  And that was the first night

  of my long restless vigil:

  my last night at rest,

  the eve of Congal’s battle.

  And then Glen Bolcain was my lair,

  my earth and den;

  I’ve scaled and strained against those slopes

  by star and moon.

  I wouldn’t swop a lonely hut

  in that dear glen

  for a world of moorland acres

  on a russet mountain.

  Its water flashing like wet grass,

  its wind so keen,

  its tall brooklime, its watercress

  the greenest green.

  I love the ancient ivy tree,

  the pale-leafed sallow,

  the birch’s whispered melody,

  the solemn yew.

  And you, Lynchseachan, can try

  disguise, deceit;

  come in the mask and shawl of night,

  I won’t be caught.

  You managed it the first time

  with your litany of the dead:

  father, mother, daughter, son,

  brother, wife—you lied

  but if you want your say again,

  then be ready

  to face the heights and crags of Mourne

  to follow me.

  I would live happy

  in an ivy bush

  high in some twisted tree

  and never come out.

  The skylarks rising

  to their high space

  send me pitching and tripping

  over stumps on the moor

  and my hurry flushes

  the turtle-dove.

  I overtake it,

  my plumage rushing,

  am startled

  by the startled woodcock

  or a blackbird’s sudden

  volubility.

  Think of my alarms,

  my coming to earth

  where the fox still

  gnaws at the bones,

  my wild career

  as the wolf from the wood

  goes tearing ahead

  and I lift towards the mountain,

  the bark of foxes

  echoing below me,

  the wolves behind me

  howling and rending—

  their vapoury tongues,

  their low-slung speed

  shaken off like nightmare

  at the foot of the slope.

  If I show my heels

  I am hobbled by guilt.

  I am a sheep

  without a fold

  who sleeps his sound sleep

  in the old tree at Kilnoo,

  dreaming back the good days

  with Congal in Antrim.

  A starry frost will come

  dropping on pools

  and I’ll be astray here

  on unsheltered heights:

  herons calling

  in cold Glenelly,

  flocks of birds quickly

  coming and going.

  I prefer the elusive

  rhapsody of blackbirds

  to the garrulous blather

  of men and women.

  I prefer the squeal of badgers

  in their sett

  to the tally-ho

  of the morning hunt.

  I prefer the re-

  echoing belling of a stag

  among the peaks

  to that arrogant horn.

  Those unharnessed runners

  from glen to glen!

  Nobody tames

  that royal blood,

  each one aloof

  on its rightful summit,

  antlered, watchful.

  Imagine them,

  the stag of high Slieve Felim,

  the stag of the steep Fews,

  the stag of Duhallow, the stag of Orrery,

  the fierce stag of Killarney.

  The stag of Islandmagee, Larne’s stag,

  the stag of Moylinny,

  the stag of Cooley, the stag of Cunghill,

  the stag of the two-peaked Burren.

  The mother of this herd

  is old and grey,

  the stags that follow her

  are branchy, many-tined.

  I would be cloaked in the grey

  sanctuary of her head,

  I would roost among

  her mazy antlers

  and would be lofted into

  this thicket of horns

  on the stag that lows at me

  over the glen.

  I am Sweeney, the whinger,

  the scuttler in the valley.

  But call me, instead,

  Peak-pate, Stag-head.

  The springs I always liked

  were the fountain at Dunmall

  and the spring-well on Knocklayde

  that tasted pure and cool.

  Forever mendicant,

  my rags all frayed and scanty,

  high in the mountains

  like a crazed, frost-bitten sentry

  I find no bed nor quarter,

  no easy place in the sun—

  not even in this reddening

  covert of tall fern.

  My only rest: eternal

  sleep in holy ground

  when Moling’s earth lets fall

  its dark balm on my wound.

  But now that sudden bleating

  and belling in the glen!

  I am a timorous stag

  feathered by Ronan Finn.

  41 After that poem, Sweeney went on from Feegile through Bannagh, Benevenagh and Maghera but he could not shake off the hag until he reached Dunseverick in Ulster. There he leaped from the summit of the fort, down a sheer drop, coaxing the hag to follow. She leaped quickly after him but fell on the cliff of Dunseverick, where she was smashed to pieces and scattered into the sea. That is how she got her end on Sweeney’s trail.

  42 Then Sweeney said:

  —From now on, I won’t tarry in Dal-Arie because Lynchseachan would have my life to avenge the hag’s.

  So he proceeded to Roscommon in Connacht, where he alighted on the bank of the well and treated himself to watercress and water. But when a woman came out of the erenach’s house, he panicked and fled, and she gathered the watercress from the stream. Sweeney watched her from his tree and greatly lamented the theft of his patch of cress, saying:

  —It is a shame that you are taking my watercress. If only you knew my plight, how I am unpitied by tribesman or kinsman, how I am no longer a guest in any house on the ridge of the world. Watercress is my wealth, water is my wine, and hard bare trees and soft tree bowers are my friends. Even if you left that cress, you would not be left wanting; but if you take it, you are taking the bite from my mouth.

  And he made this poem:

  43

  Woman, picking the watercress

  and scooping up my drink of water,

  were you to leave them as my due

  you would still be none the poorer.

  Woman, have consideration,

  we two go two different ways:

  I perch out among tree-tops,

  you lodge here in a friendly house.

  Woman, have consideration.

  Think of me in the sharp wind,

  forgotten, past consideration,

  without a cloak to wrap me in.

  Woman, you cannot start to know

  sorrows Sweeney has forgotten:

  how friends were so long denied him

  he killed his gift for friendship even.

  Fugitive, deserted, mocked

  by memories of my days as king,

  no longer called to head the troop

  when warriors are mustering,

  no longer the honoured guest

  at tables anywhere in Ireland,

  ranging like a mad pilgrim

  over rock-peaks on the mountain.

  The harper who harped me to rest,

  where is his soothing music now?

  M
y people too, my kith and kin,

  where did their affection go?

  In my heyday, on horseback,

  I rode high into my own:

  now memory’s an unbroken horse

  that rears and suddenly throws me down.

  Over starlit moors and plains,

  woman plucking my watercress,

  to his cold and lonely station

  the shadow of that Sweeney goes

  with watercress for his herds

  and cold water for his mead,

  bushes for companions,

  the bare hillside for his bed.

  Hugging these, my cold comforts,

  still hungering after cress,

  above the bare plain of Emly

  I hear cries of the wild geese,

  and still bowed to my hard yoke,

  still a bag of skin and bone,

  I reel as if a blow hit me

  and fly off at the cry of a heron

  to land maybe in Dairbre

  in spring, when days are on the turn,

  to scare away again by twilight

  westward, into the Mournes.

  Gazing down at clean gravel,

  to lean out over a cool well,

  drink a mouthful of sunlit water

  and gather cress by the handful—

  even this you would pluck from me,

  lean pickings that have thinned my blood

  and chilled me on the cold uplands,

  hunkering low when winds spring up.

  Morning wind is the coldest wind,

  it flays me of my rags, it freezes—

  the very memory leaves me speechless,

  woman, picking the watercress.

  Woman:

  Judge not and you won’t be judged.

  Sweeney, be kind, learn the lesson

  that vengeance belongs to the Lord

  and mercy multiplies our blessings.

  Sweeney:

  Then here is justice, fair and even,

  from my high court in the yew:

  Leave the patch of cress for me,

  I shall give my rags in lieu.

  I have no place to lay my head.

  Human love has failed me. So

  let me swop sins for watercress,

  let thieving make a scapegoat of you.

  Your greed has left me hungering

  so may these weeds you robbed me of

  come between you and good luck

  and leave you hungering for love.

  As you snatched cress, may you be snatched

  by the foraging, blue-coated Norse.

  And live eaten by remorse.

  And cursing God that our paths crossed.

  44 He stayed in Roscommon that night and the next day he went on to Slieve Aughty, from there to the pleasant slopes of Slemish, then on to the high peaks of Slieve Bloom, and from there to Inishmurray. After that, he stayed six weeks in a cave that belonged to Donnan on the island of Eig off the west of Scotland. From there he went on to Ailsa Craig, where he spent another six weeks, and when he finally left there he bade the place farewell and bewailed his state, like this:

  45

  Without bed or board

  I face dark days

  in frozen lairs

  and wind-driven snow.

  Ice scoured by winds.

  Watery shadows from weak sun.

  Shelter from the one tree

  on a plateau.

  Haunting deer-paths,

  enduring rain,

  first-footing the grey

  frosted grass.

  I climb towards the pass

  and the stag’s belling

  rings off the wood,

  surf-noise rises

  where I go, heartbroken

  and worn out,

  sharp-haunched Sweeney,

  raving and moaning.

  The sough of the winter night,

  my feet packing the hailstones

  as I pad the dappled

  banks of Mourne

  or lie, unslept, in a wet bed

  on the hills by Lough Erne,

  tensed for first light

  and an early start.

  Skimming the waves

  at Dunseverick,

  listening to billows

  at Dun Rodairce,

  hurtling from that great wave

  to the wave running

  in tidal Barrow,

  one night in hard Dun Cernan,

  the next among the wild flowers

  of Benn Boirne;

  and then a stone pillow

  on the screes of Croagh Patrick.

  I shift restlessly

  on the plain of Boroma,

  from Benn Iughoine

  to Benn Boghaine.

  Then that woman

  interfered,

  disturbed me

  and affronted me

  and made off with

  the bite from my mouth.

  It is constant,

  this retribution,

  as I gather cress

  in tender bunches,

  four round handfuls

  in Glen Bolcain,

  and unpick

  the shy bog-berry,

  then drink water

  from Ronan’s well.

  My nails are bent,

  my loins weak,

  my feet bleeding,

  my thighs bare—

  I’ll be overtaken

  by a stubborn band

  of Ulstermen

  faring through Scotland.

  But to have ended up

  lamenting here

  on Ailsa Craig.

  A hard station!

  Ailsa Craig,

  the seagulls’ home,

  God knows it is

  hard lodgings.

  Ailsa Craig,

  bell-shaped rock,

  reaching sky-high,

  snout in the sea—

  it hard-beaked,

  me seasoned and scraggy:

  we mated like a couple

  of hard-shanked cranes.

  I tread the slop

  and foam of beds,

  unlooked for,

  penitential,

  and imagine treelines

  somewhere beyond,

  a banked-up, soothing,

  wooded haze,

  not like the swung

  depths and swells

  of that nightmare-black

  lough in Mourne.

  I need woods

  for consolation,

  some grove in Meath—

  or the space of Ossory.

  Or Ulster in harvest.

  Strangford, shimmering.

  Or a summer visit

  to green Tyrone.

  At Lammas I migrate

  to the springs of Teltown,

  pass the spring fishing

  the bends of the Shannon.

  I often get as far

  as my old domain,

  those groomed armies,

  those stern hillsides.

  46 Then Sweeney left Ailsa Craig and flew over the stormy maw of the sea to the land of the Britons. He passed their royal stronghold on his right and discovered a great wood where he could hear wailing and lamentation. Sometimes it was a great moan of anguish, sometimes an exhausted sigh. The moaner turned out to be another madman astray in the wood. Sweeney approached him.

  —Who are you, friend? Sweeney asked.

  —A madman, said he.

  —In that case, you are a friend indeed. I am a madman myself, said Sweeney. Why don’t you join up with me?

  —I would, the other man said, except that I am in dread of the king or the king’s retinue capturing me, and I am not sure that you are not one of them.

  —I am no such thing, said Sweeney, and since you can trust me, tell me your name.

  —They call me the Man of the Wood, said the madman.

  Then Sweeney spoke this verse and the Man of the Wood answered as follows:


  47

  Sweeney:

  What happened, Man of the Wood,

  to make you whinge

  and hobble like this? Why did

  your mind unhinge?

  Man:

  Caution and fear of the king

  have silenced me.

  I made a tombstone of my tongue

  to keep my story.

  I am the Man of the Wood.

  I was famous

  in battles once. Now I hide