Myths and Legends of the Celts (Penguin Reference) (33 page)
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Authors: James MacKillop
Suibne or Suibhne, the antecedent of Sweeney, was a common enough name in early Ireland, but there is no indication that Suibne, the cursed king who went mad, ever existed. He does not appear in the genealogies of the people he is supposed to have ruled. The setting of his three-part story is linked to the Battle of Mag Rath (or Moira) of
AD
637, the culmination of a momentous dynastic struggle in what is today Co. Down. Citations for Suibne
Geilt
[Mad Sweeney] appear in a ninth-century law tract, but his main story,
Buile Suibhne
[The Frenzy of Suibne], did not take its present form until the twelfth century, surviving in three manuscripts written five centuries later. Redactors of his narrative are careful to present the Church most favourably, especially as a repository of native learning. The two stories preceding
Buile Suibhne
are
Fled Dúin na nGéd
[The Feast of Dún na nGéd], which deals with events leading up to the battle, and
Cath Maige Rátha
[The Battle of Mag Rath], a description of the carnage there.
Action begins in the petty kingdom of Dál nAraide, which straddled the border of counties Antrim and Down in what is now eastern Northern Ireland. King Suibne, son of Colmán, seeks to expel the evangelizing St Rónán from his realm, but his wife Eórann tries to temper her husband. Enraged by the sound of Rónán’s proselytizing bell, Suibne dashes out of the front door of his castle while Eórann tries to stop him by grabbing his coat. This leaves the pagan king stark
naked but still carrying weapons, like the ancient Gaulish warriors described by Posidonius. In a fit of fury, Suibne hurls Rónán’s psalter into a lake and is about to give the saint a pasting when his kingly responsibility calls him to the Battle of Mag Rath. Piously the saint gives thanks to God for being spared, but he also curses King Suibne, asking that he be made to wander through the world naked, just as he had come naked into Rónán’s presence.
The king’s second encounter with the saint has a more lasting effect. After an otter magically restores Rónán’s psalter, so that it appears it was never dropped in water, the saint approaches the Mag Rath battlefield, hoping to bring peace. He is not successful. As he blesses the armies, his sprinkling of holy water irks Suibne so severely that he thrusts a spear through an attendant, killing him. He hurls another at the saint himself, only to see it break against Rónán’s bell, its shaft flying into the air. Thus the saint curses the king a second time, declaring that he should fly through the air like the shaft of his spear and that he may perish of a cast spear. Initially unconcerned, Suibne rejoins the battle and finds himself increasingly disoriented amid the clamour of bloodletting. Seized with trembling like a wild bird, he flees the battlefield. As he races madly, his feet barely touch the ground and he alights in a yew tree. Meanwhile, at the battle, his opponents are victorious after Suibne’s withdrawal. After a kinsman fails to restore the king to his senses, Suibne flees to a remoter corner of Ireland, perching on a tree in Tír Chonaill [Donegal].
Always tormented, Suibne wanders the land, described in passages filled with arrays of poetic place-names, often wishing that he had been killed in battle. His lamentations come in long verse narratives, or lays. While not a member of the privileged, powerful caste of poets,
filid
(sing.
fili
), Suibne is a king who speaks poetry. He describes himself as a madman, and as he is naked, shivering in the trees, he looks like one. Eventually he finds respite in the valley of the lunatics, Glen Bolcáin. This appears to have been an actual place and is identified with the modern Glenbuck near Rasharkin, Co. Antrim. A Fenian text places the valley on the Dingle Peninsula in Co. Kerry, which may have been another such retreat.
At some of his stops Suibne gives cryptic advice. Reaching the lyrically named church of Snám Dá Én [Swim Two Birds] on the
Shannon, near the monastery of Clonmacnoise, the mad king observes the clerics reciting their Friday canonical prayers, the nones. Nearby, women are beating flax, and one of them is giving birth to a child. Unsettled by what he sees Suibne announces that it is unseemly for women to violate the Lord’s fast-day, which is how he views what the rest of humanity sees as the miracle of childbirth. Then he compares the beating of the flax with the bloody beating his folk had taken at Mag Rath. Hearing the vesper bell, he complains, ‘Sweeter indeed were it to me to hear the voices of the cuckoos on the banks of the Bann from every side than the cacophony of this bell, which I hear tonight.’ His lay that follows repeats this theme, praises the beauty of nature and ends with a plea to Christ not to sever Suibne from His sweetness.
Throughout this torment, Suibne’s one faithful friend is Loingsechán, perhaps a foster-brother or a half-brother sharing the same mother. On three occasions Loingsechán rescues Suibne and keeps him informed about his family. In his unsettled mental state Suibne sometimes does not wish to be approached so on one occasion Loingsechán has to take on the guise of a mill-hag. She had won the king’s confidence by giving him food.
Led by Loingsechán, Suibne speaks of his desire to be with his wife Eórann, who has gone to live with a friend of the king, Guaire. At first he reproaches his wife for this, but when she says that she would rather live with him, even in misery, he takes pity on her and recommends that she stay with her new lover.
When a crowd gathers, Suibne flees again to the wilderness, coming to rest in a tree. On Loingsechán’s second visit the subject turns to Suibne’s kingdom. The sad news is that the king’s father, mother and brother have died. So too his only daughter, a needle to the heart. When he learns that his son also has died, Suibne is so overcome by grief that he falls from his tree. At this Loingsechán grabs Suibne, ties him up and tells him that his family is actually alive after all. The news shocks the king back to sanity, at which Loingsechán takes him back to Dál nAraide and helps re-install him as king.
Sanity and lucidity do not last long. When Suibne is alone in his palace, he is approached by the once-helpful mill-hag, whom Loingsechán impersonated. She reminds him of his period of madness
and persuades him to jump, as he had often done in his former state. Maliciously, she competes with him, and they both jump into the wilderness where Suibne falls back into his lunacy. The mill-hag and her contest reappear in Irish oral tradition and probably originate there. Arriving at the northern cliff-edge fortress of Dún Sobairche [Dunseverick, Co. Antrim], Suibne clears the battlements in a single bound. Trying to equal his feat, the mill-hag falls from a cliff and is killed. Following this, Suibne migrates to Britain and keeps company with a madman, who had been cursed by his people for sending soldiers into battle dressed in satin. This man eventually drowns himself in a waterfall, but his presence underscores the links with the Welsh-Arthurian figure Merlin, called Myrddin
(G) wyllt
in his madness, perhaps an anticipation of Suibne Geilt. Returning to Ireland once again, Suibne is afraid to enter his own house for fear of capture. His wife Eórann complains that she is now ashamed of his madness and as he does not choose to live with her, she wishes he would depart for ever. Crestfallen, Suibne departs, bewailing the fickleness of women.
More torments beset Suibne’s flight around Ireland before he can find deliverance. A severely wet and cold night brings another interval of lucidity in which he seeks to return to Dál nAraide. But when this news is miraculously transmitted to St Rónán, he prays that the mad king not be allowed to persecute the Church again. Following this, a horde of fiendish phantoms vexes and harries Suibne, sending him deliriously in every direction. At last, finding forgiveness for his many misdeeds, Suibne comes to the monastery of St Moling, Tech Moling, which is now St Mullins, Co. Carlow. Moling, or Mo Ling, is an historical figure (d. 697), whom Giraldus Cambrensis (eleventh century) called ‘one of the Four Prophets of Ireland’. This saint takes pity on the wandering madman and allows him to return to the monastery each evening for a meal. More importantly, Moling also writes down his adventures. Reception from the saint’s household takes a different tone. The monastery cook delivers sustenance by poking a hole in a cowdung with her foot and then filling it with milk for Suibne to lap. Even this demeaning favour is too much for the cook’s husband, who runs Suibne through with his spear. Fainting in weakness from the wound, Suibne confesses his sins to St Moling and is given the last
rites. Taking the forgiving saint’s hand, Suibne is led to the door of the church where he collapses and dies, freed from his double curse.
Although the names are changed, Suibne is unmistakably the model for Goll in William Butler Yeats’s early poem, ‘The Madness of King Goll’ (1887).
This story and the one preceding it have many elements in common, although composed at different times by different people. We have yet another figure named Rónán, a king this time, unrelated to the saint, and some of the action takes place at Dún Sobairche in Co. Antrim. The central narrative is tied to putative historical figures whose names appear in the Chronicles. It is unlikely that the main players in the narrative, Rónán and Eochaid, knew each other in life. King Rónán mac Áeda of Leinster died in 610 or 624. His fatherin-law, presumably an older man, Eochaid or Echaid Iarlaithe, is recorded as having died more than forty years later, in 665. The story citing both kings was probably invented a century or two later by a genealogist drawing on classical sources. A surviving text, perhaps of the tenth century, is found in the
Book of Leinster
(after 1150). More than in other stories of this cycle, the metaphysical element is absent. There are no gods, taboos or enchantments. Tension arises from everyday human elements such as love, jealousy, hate and violence. The usual Irish title is
Fingal Rónáin
[How Rónán Killed his Son], but it is sometimes known as
Aided Maíl Fhothartaig Maic Rónáin
[The Death of Máel Fhothartaig Son of Rónán].
Rónán, king of Leinster, is the father of Máel Fhothartaig, the handsomest and most admired young man in the province. Men gather around him whenever he appears. As he matures, he increasingly becomes the darling of young girls in the court, whose favours he returns. His father Rónán, meanwhile, is a sad widower, his wife, a certain Eithne of Munster, Máel Fhothartaig’s mother, having died sometime previously. His thoughtful son recommends he seek a wife, perhaps a settled woman. Rónán chooses instead an attractive young
woman, the daughter of Eochaid of Dún Sobairche in the north. The bride is never named, but she is certainly not what the son had in mind for his father. He describes her as ‘skittish’. Once she arrives at Rónán’s residence, however, she has a much more positive view of her stepson the he does of her. Indeed, she is immediately smitten with him and sends her beautiful maidservant, under threat of execution if she fails, to solicit him to come to the new queen’s bed. To strengthen the case, the maidservant sleeps with Máel Fhothartaig herself, but also reveals the new stepmother’s desires for him. Taking heed, the young hero departs with fifty retainers for Scotland, where he soon acquires an admirable reputation as a warrior and hunter. His two hounds, Doilín and Daithlenn, are swifter than those of the host Scottish king. When his fellow Leinstermen insist that he return home, he comes via Dún Sobairche where King Eochaid tells him that his daughter should have been sleeping with him, Máel Fhothartaig himself, instead of that old churl Rónán. The young man is displeased to hear this, but continues his travels to Leinster anyway.
On his arrival the unfortunate maidservant is again sent, under pain of death, to cajole the young man to come to the queen’s bed. In despair Máel Fhothartaig asks advice of his foster-brother Congal, who responds that he has a solution but for a price. He rejects an offer of the horse, bridle and clothes and says he will take nothing but the two prize hunting dogs. The ruse is simple. Máel Fhothartaig must leave early in the morning to herd cattle before Congal goes to the queen and tells her that the young man is hoping to tryst with her later that day at an appointed spot marked with white stones. After displaying her eagerness all morning, the queen sets off for the white stones and twice she runs instead into Congal, who reviles her with abusive language, like ‘Harlot!’ and ‘Wicked woman!’ The third time he escalates his attack with a horsewhip. Beaten but unbowed, she snarls back at him, ‘I shall bring blood into your mouth.’
That night back at Rónán’s residence, the king is praising his son, who has not yet returned from the herding mission on which Congal had sent him. The dishevelled queen grumbles that the king is always puffing up his son. Rónán responds by extending his admiration and adds that the son does it all for the comfort of his father and his father’s
new wife. In a surly voice she answers that the son does not get the comfort in return that he desires. ‘Three times Congal brought him to me,’ she charges, ‘and it was hard for me to escape from him.’
Rónán angrily denounces her, ‘A curse on your lips, you evil woman.’ But she responds that she can prove her charges. Soon Máel Fhothartaig enters and begins to dry his legs by the fire, presenting the queen with her moment to act. He recites half a quatrain about cold weather, which she is able to complete with words about how cold it is for a man to be without his lover.
‘It is true, then!’ exclaims Rónán, signalling to one of his men, Áedán. The retainer immediately casts his spear toward the son, its shaft transfixing Máel Fhothartaig to his chair. A second catches the foster-brother Congal, and a third rips out the bowels of the jester Mac Glass. In his death throes, the son tells his father that he has been taken in by a miserable lie. Further, he relates how the young queen had been pestering him, how Congal led her away three times, and that he would no more sin with her than with his own mother. He swears by the tryst with death, to which he goes, that he is innocent.
The words have their desired effect. After Máel Fhothartaig dies, Rónán mourns for three days, singing an eloquent, restrained lamentation that describes his wife as a guilty, lustful woman. In seeking vengeance, Congal’s brother Donn journeys to Dún Sobairche where he lures the queen’s father, Eochaid, from his palace, the better to slaughter him, his wife and his son. Donn carries the heads back to Leinster where he flings them on to the queen’s breast. At this she rises and throws herself on her own knife.
The story ends with the introduction of Máel Fhothartaig’s previously unmentioned sons, whose mother’s name is neither given nor implied. They come to Rónán’s door and announce that a fight is to be held outside at which an old champion cannot stand. With that, blood comes to Rónán’s mouth, and he dies at once.
Whoever constructed the story of
Fingal Rónáin
very likely borrowed from the widely known Greek tale of the virtuous charioteer Hippolytus and the lustful, vicious Phaedra, found in Euripides’
Hippolytus
(428
BC
) and elsewhere. Often misogynist early churchmen were fond of stories of erring women, and might also have drawn from the
Biblical Joseph’s unwanted encounter with Potiphar’s wife (Genesis, 39: 12). The theme of mistaken sexual rivalry between son and father carries the folk motif number of K2111. See also tale type 870C.