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!
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