The Myth
Of Sweeney
The Myth of Sweeney goes back to the 7th century in Ireland. Initially transmitted as an oral tale in the bardic tradition, it was transcribed in an Irish scriptorium in the 17th century (the first known manuscript is dated 1670).
Buile Suibhne relates the story of Suibhne Geilt (Sweeney Geilt), a medieval Pagan King cursed by a saint, transformed into a bird and doomed to exile, solitude and madness. As a counterpart, the fallen king is endowed with a with a poetic gift: throughout Buile Suibhne, the bird-man voices his predicament in songs of complaint or praise. 

The Myth of Sweeney Geilt is a combination of Pagan lore—in Irish, a geilt is a warrior who is stricken with madness on a battlefield and turns into a Wild Man of the Woods—, and Christian re-telling: in the christianized version of Buile Suibhne, King Sweeney is cursed by a priest and bound to achieve redemption through wandering and suffering.
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Sweeney's tragic fate is indeed triggered by a confrontation with a Christian priest: infuriated by the sound of Saint Ronan’s bell, the King of Dal-Arie rushes out to prevent the cleric from marking out a church on his territory. Trying to hold her husband back, his wife Eorann unclasps his cloak: stark-naked, Sweeney confronts his enemy, throws his psalter into the nearby lake, and starts molesting him when a messenger sent by King Congal comes to summon him to the battle of Moira. Ronan curses his enemy:
He will roam through Erin as a stark madman, 

and it shall be by a spear-point he will die.
[…] Stark-naked he has come here

to wring my heart, to chase me;

on that account God will cause 

that Suibhne shall ever naked be. (6) *
During the battle of Magh Rath (Moyra), Ronan acts as a mediator between the two armies. Sweeney violates the truce imposed by the priest, kills Ronan’s foster son, and breaks the saint’s bell with his spear. Ronan curses him again:
My curse on Suibhne!
Great is his guilt against me,
his smooth, vigorous
dart he thrust through my holy belly.

That bell which thou hast wounded
will send thee among branches,
so that thou shalt be one with the birds—
the bell of saints before saints.

Even as in an instant went
the spear-shaft on high,
mayst thou go, O Suibhne,
in madness, without respite!

Thou hast slain my foster-child,
thou hast reddened thy spear in him,
thou shalt have in return for it
that with a spear-point thou shalt die. (10)
Sweeney goes mad on the battlefield. Metamorphosed into a bird, he flies out of battle:
Thereafter, when both battle-hosts had met, the vast army on both sides roared in the manner of a herd of stags so that they raised on high three mighty shouts. Now, when Suibhne heard these great cries together with their sounds and reverberations in the clouds of Heaven and in the vault of the firmament, he looked up, whereupon turbulence, and darkness, and fury, and giddiness, and frenzy, and flight, unsteadiness, restlessness, and unquiet filled him, likewise disgust with every place in which he used to be and desire for every place which he had not reached. His fingers were palsied, his feet trembled, his heart beat quick, his senses were overcome, his sight was distorted, his weapons fell naked from his hands, so that through Ronan's curse he went, like any bird of the air, in madness and imbecility. (11)
The Bird-man flies to the woods; he is doomed to wander from tree to tree through Ireland. After a year, he reaches Glen Bolcain, the haven for Irish madmen and madwomen:
A year to last night
have I been among the gloom of branches,
between flood and ebb,
without covering around me.

Without a pillow beneath my head,
among the fair children of men;
there is peril to us, O God,
without sword, without spear.

Without sleep, alas!
let the truth be told,
without aid for a long time,
hard is my lot. (19)
Sweeney then goes to Snamh dha En (Swim-Two-Birds), where his lament turns into a Christian song of praise:
O Christ, O Christ, hear me!
O Christ, O Christ, without sin!
O Christ, O Christ, love me!
sever me not from thy sweetness! (23)
Sweeney’s foster-brother has been chasing him all the while, hoping to bring him back to civilisation. Loingseachan disguises himself, but Sweeney recognizes him and flees away; he then decides to visit his wife Eorann, who welcomes him tenderly. Yet he leaves in a panic when his rival’s army returns.
His foster-brother finally manages to catch him by pretending that his whole family is dead. Sweeney falls from the tree where he had found shelter; he is well looked after and begins to recover his sanity. One day, the Hag of the Mill asks him to tell her about his wanderings. Sweeney refuses. She challenges him to leap as far as her; they start competing and Sweeney becomes mad again.
‘For God’s sake,’ said the hag, ‘leap for us now one of the leaps you used to leap when you were mad.’ Thereupon he bounded over the bed-rail so that he reached the end of the bench. ‘My conscience!’ said the hag, ‘I could leap that myself,’ and in the same manner she did so. He took another leap out through the skylight of the hostel. ‘I could leap that too,’ said the hag, and straightway she leaped. This, however, is a summary of it: Suibhne travelled through five cantreds of Dal Araidhe that day until he arrived at Glenn na nEachtach in Fiodh Gaibhle, and she followed him all that time. (39)
Stopping in Feegile, Sweeney composes a eulogy about the flora and the fauna of Ireland. The central section of Buile Suibhne (section 40) is a sequence of 58 quatrains in which the Wild Man of the Woods praises the trees and beasts of Ireland, while telling (once again) about his adventures and his complaints:
O little stag, thou little bleating one;
O melodious little clamourer,

sweet to us is the music

thou makest in the glen.
Thou oak, bushy, leafy,

thou art high beyond trees;

O hazlet, little branching one, 

O fragrance of hazel-nuts. (40)
The witch dies on Sweeney’s trail, and the bird-man flies across the Irish sea. In the forests of Wales, he befriends another geilt, Ealladhan, or Fer Caille (meaning "Man of the Wood"). They wander together for a year until the madman’s death:
Ealladhan said to Suibhne: ‘It is time that we part to-day, for the end of my life has come, and I must go to the place where it has been destined for me to die.’ ‘What death shall you die?’ said Suibhne. ‘Not difficult to say,’ said Ealladhan; ‘I go now to Eas Dubhthaigh, and a blast of wind will get under me and cast me into the waterfall so that I shall be drowned, and I shall be buried afterwards in a churchyard of a saint, and I shall obtain Heaven; and that is the end of my life. And, O Suibhne,’ said Ealladhan, ‘tell me what your own fate will be.’ Suibhne then told him as the story relates below. (50)
After his alter ego's death, Sweeney flies back to Ulster and visits his wife Eorann who rejects him. He complains about the harshness of his plight:
I am in great grief to-night,
the pure wind has pierced my body;
wounded are my feet, my cheek is wan,
O great God! it is my due. […]
Sleeping of nights without covering in a wood
in the top of a thick, bushy tree,
without hearing voice or speech;
O Son of God, great is the misery! (61)
As Sweeney progressively retrieves his sanity, Ronan renews his curse. Nightmarish apparitions chase Sweeney and draw him into madness:
Great in sooth was the terror, the crying and wailing, the screaming and crying aloud, the din and tumult of the heads after him as they were clutching and eagerly pursuing him. Such were the force and swiftness of that pursuit that the heads leaped on his calves, his houghs, his thighs, his shoulders, and the nape of his neck, so that the impact of head against head, and the clashing of all against the sides of trees and the heads of rocks, against the surface and the earth, seemed to him like the rush of a wild torrent from the breast of a high mountain; nor did they cease until he escaped from them into the filmy clouds of the sky. (65)
After seven years of wanderings, Sweeney reaches the Monastery of Tech Moling. There Saint Moling welcomes him kindly, asking him to come and visit him every evening in order to tell his adventures and recite his poems.

Every morning, Muirghil, Moling’s kitchen maid, pours milk for Sweeney in a cow dung which she digs with her heel. Out of jealousy, her husband, Moling’s swineherd, attacks the bird-man and kills him with a spear, thus fulfilling Saint Ronan's prophecy.
As the priests lament Sweeney’s murder, the geilt is transfigured: he becomes a holy fool, a saintly madman; blessed by Saint Moling, he breathes his last sigh:
Thereafter, Suibhne rose out of his swoon and Moling taking him by the hand the two proceeded to the door of the church. When Suibhne placed his shoulders against the door-post he breathed a loud sigh and his spirit fled to Heaven, and he was buried honourably by Moling. (86)
Here end the Tales and Adventures of Suibhne Geilt.
* All the quotes are taken from James O'Keeffe's bilingual edition: Buile Suibne (The Frenzy of Suibhne) Being the Adventures of Suibhne Geilt: a Middle-Irish Romance, Irish Texts Society, London, David Nutt, 1913.