This will be the last of the Heroes to be covered…and the last of the Irish figures, too (sadly!…though the Tetrad++ic being and Greek Deities coming up aren’t remotely a cause for sadness, either!).
SUIBHNE GEILT
1. Write a basic introduction for the Hero.
Suibhne mac Colmain was said to be a non-Christian king of the Dál nAraidi, an Ulster people who had a large Pictish (or, in Irish, Cruithenn) population, during the early 7th c. CE. While he is recorded in some historical annals of later dates than his purported existence, and the Dál nAraidi and some of the events associated with his life certainly are historical, Suibhne himself is probably fictitious; it’s possible he was the Cruithenn substitute for the actual king of Dál nAraidi (and possible High King of Ireland), Congal Cláen (or Congal Cáech), who was in exile during the time leading up to the battle of Mag Rath (which took place during the summer of 637 CE), in which Suibhne was said to have died in the annals, but in which he ends up going mad in the Middle Irish text dedicated to him, Buile Shuibhne. In that text, he was said to have fallen afoul of St. Rónán, who cursed him to go mad in battle, and then after various episodes of madness and recovery and a long time spent in the wild places of Ireland living like a bird (and with feathers having grown on his body), he eventually comes into the orbit of another ecclesiastical figure, St. Moling, and dies under his supervision.
He is the most famous and detailed example of a geilt, a “madman/wildman,” and in his case it is because he is cursed by the saint, and then during the battle concerned, he looks toward the sky and is driven insane by the battle spirits he sees. When he later recovers for a bit, he ends up being driven mad again by spirits that come to him in the form of severed animals’ heads that speak and hop along the road. Another such madman known from British tradition is actually Merlin–yes, that Merlin–as related by Geoffrey of Monmouth. There are a number of others, too; and Suibhne visits Britain and spends time with a madman there, as well as other geilta in Ireland.
Suibhne, or “Sweeney” as his name is usually anglicized, is known or alluded to in later Anglo-Irish and British literatures, including in Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds, and T.S. Eliot’s Sweeney Agonistes is based on him. Seamus Heaney wrote a translated version of the medieval text, known under the title Sweeney Astray. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods also has a character in it vaguely (but only very vaguely) based on Sweeney as well. This list of more recent literary appearances is not exhaustive.
2. How did you become first aware of this Hero?
I’d heard of Flann O’Brien’s work before I went to college, and had heard vague rumors of Suibhne in various places from the time of high school through early college. I was first told of Seamus Heaney’s Sweeney Astray during my second semester of first year as an undergraduate, and read the book then (as well as during my junior year at Oxford), in a fiction and poetry class respectively. Either during my first year or my second as well, a member of the music department, James Cowdery, made a musical setting of some of the Suibhne poetry of which I heard/saw the premiere. Also while in Oxford, I saw the “second recension” of Riverdance in London at one point, which has a number dedicated to Suibhne (with very poor pronunciation of the names–it’s called “Shivna,” and you’ll see/hear it below.) At some point–I think during senior year of undergraduate college, or possibly during my first year (I can’t now remember…oddly enough!)–I also wrote on the connections between transformations into birds in Breton lays and Suibhne, and transformations into wolves/dogs in the same contexts as well in relation to other Celtic matters, which was, thus, the beginnings of my eventual Ph.D. dissertation. When I finally got to the Irish originals of Suibhne, it was during my early years in Ireland (2001-2002). My friend, colleague, and co-religionist Erynn Rowan Laurie is HUGE into Suibhne, however, and it was during the time that I was her library geilt, so to speak (!?!), that I became more involved with him, and eventually began hero cultus to him in the last few years.
3. What are some symbols and icons of this Hero?
I don’t know that he has any in particular, though given his connection with birds (and with feathers), that would be a good start, and something in absence of anything else.
4. Share a favorite myth or myths of this Hero.
He really only has one myth, so to speak, with various episodes. The beginning of it, though, and the end both have parts that I’ve always found either interesting, appealing, or disgusting…you be the judge. The following is J.G. O’Keefe’s translation.
There was a certain noble, distinguished holy patron in Ireland, even Ronan Finn, son of Bearach, son of Criodhan, son of Earclugh, son of Ernainne, son of Urene, son of Seachnusach, son of Colum Cuile, son of Mureadhach, son of Laoghaire, son of Niall; a man who fulfilled God’s command and bore the yoke of piety, and endured, persecutions for the Lord’s sake. He was God’s own worthy servant, for it was his wont to crucify his body for love of God and to win a reward for his soul. A sheltering shield against evil attacks of the devil and against vices was that gentle, friendly, active man.
On one occasion he was marking out a church named Cell Luinne in Dal Araidhe. (At that time Suibhne, son of Colman, of whom we have spoken, was king of Dal Araidhe.) Now, in the place where he was, Suibhne heard the sound of Ronan’s bell as he was marking out the church, and he asked his people what it was they heard. ‘It is Ronan Finn, son of Bearach,’ said they, ‘who is marking out a church in your territory and land, and it is the sound of his bell you now hear.’ Suibhne was greatly angered and enraged, and he set out with the utmost haste to drive the cleric from the church. His wife Eorann, daughter of Conn of Ciannacht, in order to hold him, seized the wing of the fringed, crimson cloak which was around him, so that the fibula of pure white silver, neatly inlaid with gold, which was on his cloak over his breast, sprang through the house. Therewith, leaving his cloak with the queen, he set out stark-naked in his swift career to expel the cleric from the church, until he reached the place where Ronan was.
He found the cleric at the time glorifying the King of heaven and earth by blithely chanting his psalms with his lined, right-beautiful psalter in front of him. Suibhne took up the psalter and cast it into the depths of the cold-water lake which was near him, so that it was drowned therein. Then he seized Ronan’s hand and dragged him out through the church after him, nor did he let go the cleric’s hand until he heard a cry of alarm. It was a serving-man of Congai Claon, son of Scannlan, who uttered that cry; he had come from Congal himself to Suibhne in order that he (Suibhne) might engage in battle at Magh Rath. When the serving-man reached the place of parley with Suibhne, he related the news to him from beginning to end. Suibhne then went with the serving-man and left the c1eric sad and sorrowful over the loss of his psalter and the contempt and dishonour which had been inflicted on him.
Thereafter, at the end of a day and a night, an otter that was in the lake came to Ronan with the psalter, and neither line nor letter of it was injured. Ronan gave thanks to God for that miracle, and then cursed Suibhne, saying: Be it my will, together with the will of the mighty Lord, that even as he came stark-naked to expel me, may it be thus that he will ever be, naked, wandering and flying throughout the world; may it be death from a spear-point that will carry him off. My curse once more on Suibhne, and my blessing on Eorann who strove to hold him; and furthermore, I bequeath to the race of Colman that destruction and extinction may be their lot the day they shall behold this psalter which was cast into the water by Suibhne… (2-5)
*****
Thereafter during that year the madman was visiting Moling. One day he would go to Innis Bo Finne in west Connacht, another day to delightful Eas Ruaidh, another day to smooth, beautiful Sliabh Mis, another day to ever-chilly Benn Boirche, but go where he would each day, he would attend at vespers each night at Teach Moling. Moling ordered a collation for him for that hour, for he told his cook to give him some of each day’s milking. Muirghil was her name; she was wife of Mongan, swineherd to Moling. This was the extent of the meal the woman used to give him: she used to thrust her heel up to her ankle in the cowdung nearest her and leave the full of it of new milk there for Suibhne. He used to come cautiously and carefully into the vacant portion of the milking yard to drink the milk. (77)
5. Who are members of the family/genealogical connections of this Hero?
The only genealogical connections of Suibhne that are known is that he was said to have been the son of Colman Cuar.
6. What are some other related Deities and entities associated with this Hero?
Suibhne doesn’t come into direct contact with any Deities in his adventures, and the only people he seems to associate with–likely not by choice, it seems–are humans who are often huge assholes to him, including St. Rónán. His main supernatural encounters are with other geilta, with the battle spirits that drove him insane, and with these saints. Given that he was an explicitly non-Christian, and even anti-Christian, and these tales were written by Christians in the thoroughly Christian period of Irish history, it’s no wonder he doesn’t fare particularly well.
7. Discuss this Hero’s Names and epithets.
I generally refer to him as “Suibhne Geilt,” which is often translated “Mad Sweeney.” As mentioned before, a geilt is a madman or wildman in Irish tradition, though the word has a Welsh cognate (gwyllt) that gets used of Cyledr in Culhwch ac Olwen, and also has strong sympathies to Lleu’s transformation into an eagle during part of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi. The word also gets translated into Norse in the Old Norse text Konungs Sküggsja, and occurs in a section of the text dealing with various Irish mirabilia, adjacent to a paragraph on werewolves! (Indeed, the geilt and werewolves seem to exist on a continuum of how battle spirits can interact with humans–on the one end, one has figures like Cú Chulainn who embody all of their madness, frenzy, and furor directly in their “warp-spasms” and such, and likewise with werewolves and with berserkir-types; on the other, you’ve got the geilta, who are driven mad and then become as skittish as birds, and often grow feathers on their bodies as a result.)
Very interestingly–as mentioned with the piece on The Morrígan a few days ago, in Joannes Scotus Eriugena’s glossed bible in the section of Isaiah that mentions satyrs, Eriugena writes geilta.
8. Discuss variations on this Hero (aspects, regional forms, etc.).
Suibhne is Suibhne, no matter what; other regions of Ireland have their own stories of geilta, and Suibhne himself ranged pretty far across Ireland, and even into Britain, so his traces are known in various locations, but he’s always pretty much himself and in the form in which we know him.
9. What are some common mistakes people make about this Hero?
While the full flowering of the geilt tradition does occur in Ireland, and the other Insular Celtic cognates of it attest to some sense of this having existed for a while, one of the major sources upon which the tradition draws that cannot be ignored is the biblical tradition, and specifically the story of Nebuchadnezzar’s madness and wandering in the wilderness from the Book of Daniel, chapter 4, where the king’s madness causes him to wander for seven years eating grass as an ox. Suibhne’s transformation is likened more to a bird than an ox, but both end up eating grass; Suibhne grows feathers, whereas Nebuchadnezzar grows hair; and both are naked in their wanderings otherwise. One cannot discount the influence of the biblical text on this literary tradition, since the Christians who wrote it certainly knew the biblical text, and would have been interested in linking any native traditions–their own “Irish Old Testament,” as it were–to elements from the Hebrew Bible’s rich narrative records, whether as allegory or as direct references.
10. What are common offerings for this Hero (both historically and via your own experience)?
Some of the (largely/almost exclusively vegetarian) foods of Suibhne’s wandering exile, like watercress, have been done by us in contexts where he is being honored; while we wouldn’t put milk in a heel’s imprint in a cow pat, nonetheless milk can also be an offering. It is essentially certain that Suibhne was never given any heroic cultus in Irish tradition–other Heroes mentioned in this series might have had it, but Suibhne most certainly didn’t.
Telling his story, and creating new poetry around it, is also an important and culturally-appropriate offering.
11. Talk about festivals, days, and times sacred to this Hero.
As with most of the Heroes from Irish tradition I’ve discussed, the Hero feast date I usually select is taken from a saint’s day that is in some way associated with them. So, there are two possible ones for Suibhne. The first is St. Moling’s day, which is June 17th; the other is St. Rónán’s day, which is May 22. He can also receive an honoring on any of the Irish quarter-days, as with all of the other Irish Heroes; and, if one is doing particular rituals involving geilt-related issues, or is doing poetry related to him or in order to recover from a traumatic incident, those would also be appropriate times to give him offerings. Veterans’ Day and/or Memorial Day are also possibilities.
12. What are some places associated with this Hero and their worship?
Dál nAraidi is an area covering parts of the modern Counties Down and Antrim in Northern Ireland, and many areas and places (some now difficult if not impossible to identify) in these territories are associated with him. Mag Rath–the site of the battle where Suibhne went insane–is now modern Moira in Co. Down. Another place commonly mentioned in his tale is Glenn Bolcáin, which might be Glenbuck near Rasharkin in North Antrim; Rasharkin is likely the Ros Earcain also mentioned in the tale, and both Glenn Bolcáin and Ros Earcain may be near or might contain Glenn na nGeilt, “the valley of the madmen” that seems to be a refuge for people in the same state as Suibhne. Interestingly, Bolcán is a number of things in Irish myth: it is connected to a variety of smiths who might be Deities, like Bolg mac Búain (and The Morrígan in TBC takes the young and beautiful form of “King Búan’s daughter” to tempt Cú Chulainn!), and likewise Bolcán is the standard Old/Middle Irish translation of the name of the Roman God Vulcan, who is described in a Fenian tale as “the smith of Hell”!
While he goes to a number of other places (see here), he ends his life in Co. Carlow with St. Moling at St. Mullins along the Barrow River, which is where his grave is said to have been.
13. What modern cultural issues (if any) are closest to this Hero’s heart?
Any issues involving the care of veterans–and especially for veterans suffering from traumatic brain injuries, PTSD, and other psychological forms of trauma–are matters that Suibhne is interested in, given that such is his own situation, and he is living proof that it is generally in how the rest of society handles such individuals that their success or failure in terms of being able to lead something of a “normal” life after their service depends.
However, I’d also like to suggest something entirely novel here, which I don’t think anyone else ever has in relation to Suibhne before. The way that he ended up getting cursed was through his attempt to stymie St. Rónán. In the early 7th century, Christianization was far from complete in Ireland (despite what some historians and others might try to get you to believe), and so it is likely that Rónán’s activities were of a missionary variety. While Suibhne is portrayed as being severely punished and paying a horrible and heavy price for having opposed the saint, and he does end up having a somewhat “saintly” redeemed life later (his life, in a wilderness retreat reciting poetry about the beauty of nature, wearing a feathered version of a hair shirt, barely eating and only eating plants when he does, and being celibate is very much like the idealized monastic life–it was Christian monastic recluses, after all, not crypto-pagan “pantheists” as is sometimes asserted, who wrote the “nature poetry” associated with medieval Irish tradition), nonetheless he is a figure who stands against Christianity…no matter how “mad” it might seem to have done so under the circumstances. That sort of madness is something we need more of today, I think.
14. Has worship of this Hero changed in modern times?
Yes–while he was held in some esteem for many years by some within and without the CR movements, I don’t think his actual organized and deliberate heroic cultus began until the last few years.
15. Are there any mundane practices that are associated with this Hero?
Not that I can think of…though if anyone has any suggestions, I’d be interested in hearing them!
16. How do you think this Hero represents the values of Their pantheon and cultural origins?
As mentioned in #13, I think that the way in which Suibhne represents an old-fashioned (or, if you’re being a jerk, “regressive” or “conservative”) tendency to value the warrior ethos in standing against the coercive hegemony of Christianity–he goes out entirely naked, after all, which wasn’t a problem for the pre-Christian Irish, and in fact was the usual “battle (un)dress” of Celtic warriors as reported in classical Greek and Roman sources, as well as many Irish sources–would have been looked on as counter-cultural and negative in the 12th century when his tale was most fully elaborated; however, that’s something I think is ripe to be reclaimed now.
17. How does this Deity relate to other Deities, Heroes, and other pantheons?
Based on his interactions with the British madmen, I’d suspect he would get along well with the other Insular Celtic madmen of various sorts. I suspect other Deities that have to do with madness and such (e.g. Dionysos) and satyrs–via Eriugena’s gloss–would probably find something to potentially enjoy in him as well. The Irish version of the Aeneid describes Dido raging as a geilt. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an Irish version of Euripides’ Bakchai that would describe Pentheus as a geilt! (There probably isn’t, but if there was, that’s no doubt how they’d have handled it!)
18. How does this Hero stand in terms of gender and sexuality?
Suibhne, though he started as what we’d consider a cisgender male, would be considered gender-variant in his own time. While it is not usually said in the tales themselves, to have gone mad in battle rather than to have been able to “handle it” is, unfortunately, something that might be taken as tantamount to cowardice for some people, which is thus “unmanly” in various ways. His state, naked and wandering and homeless in the wilderness, would also be considered rather passive and not befitting a “man” in certain ways; his identity as an outlaw poet as well (while not a recognized fili as such) would also have carried a sense of being gender-variant as well to some degree or another.
While Suibhne is said to have had a wife, it’s likely that as would have been the case for nearly everyone in his culture (especially those resistant to Christianity) he would have been closer to what we think of as bisexual now than as strictly heterosexual, though he has no attested long-term relationships of a sexual or romantic nature with males…though, who knows what folks might get up to in Glenn na nGeilt? (“Sexual healing” is something that does occur in certain other cases of geilta in Ireland, though those usually involve female geilta…)
19. What quality or qualities of this Hero do you most admire?
As indicated in #13 and #16, his stand against Christianity’s advances in his territory and amongst his people.
20. What quality or qualities of Them do you find the most troubling?
His tale is presented more as a cautionary tale than as an exemplary myth; we’re supposed to find him pitiable rather than enviable. No, I don’t envy his situation, and if possible would like to do all I can to avoid ending up in a similar situation. However, that doesn’t mean that the potential risks involved with battle, and with standing up and standing firmly for what one feels is right and true in a given situation–even if it means standing against a flood that cannot be driven back–are ones that should be avoided simply because it is possible that one might be overwhelmed by them or by the circumstances surrounding them.
21. Share any art that reminds you of this Hero.
I’ve shared one before that I especially like, by Holger C. Lónze (both in the original model version, and in the finished public sculpture):
22. Share any Music that makes you think of this Hero.
I couldn’t limit myself to six here, so here are seven songs for Suibhne!
Note on the last one: if you ignore the phrase “Psycho Killer,” as Suibhne certainly isn’t that and I’m not saying he is nor that anyone in his position is, otherwise much of the lyrics of the song fits him, I think…plus, David Byrne is of Irish ancestry, and what could be more appropriate to Suibhne than “Talking Heads”?