Sweeney Astray

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For further instances see: “he went into the yew tree of the church”; “he cowered in the yew tree” at the church at Drum Iarann in Connacht. At one point, he rests “for six weeks in a yew tree” in Rasharkin (p. 28, 74, 29). Most of the texts in this edition were published during SH’s lifetime, some posthumously; several appeared multiple times, a few once; one is published here for the first time. It is a body of writing carefully and confidently accomplished – even if, ‘in the case of translation,’ as he observed, ‘it is even truer than usual that a poem is never completed, merely abandoned’ ( SF, viii).

in Mourne plastered in wet; cold rain poured. To-night, in torment, in Glasgally I am crucified in the fork of a tree. . . . All this is hard to thole, Lord! Still without bed or board, crouching to graze on cress, drinking cold water I am a bent tree / in misfortune’s wind”, says Sweeney in an early draft (Seamus Heaney, “Sweeney Astray”, Draft (13 January 1973), MS 41, 932/1, Dublin, National Library of Ireland). While this scholarly question – how much of this version is the Medieval poem and how much is Seamus Heaney – is one I can’t answer, the story as presented by Heaney as Sweeney’s story is powerful, moving, tragic and fascinating. It reveals a story-telling world where the wildest exaggerations and physically impossible activities are everyday parts of the story. However, it isn’t very difficult to accept that, and move along looking for the deeper levels that appear to me to be rather obvious in the story. Thus, without dealing with the problem of the original medieval poem and Heaney’s translation/retelling, I will sketch the marvelous story in store for any who read this delightful and challenging poem.The “wild man in the woods” genre is ancient and extends beyond Europe. William Sayers has argued that Buile Suibhne bears striking similarities to the story of Nebuchadnezzar as he appears in the Book of Daniel. See William Sayers, “The Deficient Ruler as Avian Exile: Nebuchadnezzar and Suibhne Geilt”, Ériu, vol. 43, 1992, p. 217-220; Penelope B. R. Doob, Nebuchadnezzar’s Children: Conventions of Madness in Middle English Literature, New Haven – London, Yale University Press, 1974. See also Bridgette Slavin, “The Irish Birdman: Kingship and Liminality in Buile Suibhne”, in Text and Transmission in Medieval Europe, Chris Bishop (ed.), Newcastle Upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007, p. 17-45. exciting creation that seems to grow into an original work. Some prose passages and even some of the poems are relatively flat, deliberately so. The original is also prose and poetry, but it is only as one reads and rereads Mr. Heaney's Nonetheless, within a short time he is left alone and a “hag” is left to care for him. She prods him about his occult abilities and Sweeney is off with her in pursuit, doing his wild stunts again.

Harmon, Maurice, editor, Image and Illusion: Anglo-Irish Literature and Its Contexts, Wolfhound Press, 1979. Christian Science Monitor, April 22, 1999, Elizabeth Lund, "The Enticing Sounds of This Irishman's Verse," p. 20; February 3, 2000, "' Harry Potter' Falls to a Medieval Slayer," p. 1; April 13, 2000, p. 15; April 26, 2001, p. 19.Eventually, Sweeney runs into his wife, who has now taken a place with one of two rightful successors and Sweeney recalls: “Do you remember, lady, the great love we shared when we were together? Life is still a pleasure to you but not to me.” And a humorous and beautiful exchange takes place between them where the dialogue is in poetic format. After their exchange, Sweeney is chased by Lynchseachan who eventually convinces him to return to his home at Dal-Arie, until Sweeney realizes he is being made a fool of and escapes. Suffice to say, he eventually runs into a fellow madman who asks Muirghil to give Sweeney milk each night, but due to a row between Muirghil and another woman, the other woman convinces Muirghil’s husband that Muirghil is with another man (Sweeney). The jealousy plays out to a tragic consequence for Sweeney:

O'Driscoll, Dennis. Stepping Stones: Interviews with Seamus Heaney. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008: p. 232 Sweeney Astray is a translation by Seamus Heaney of a medieval Irish work Buile Suibhne that has all the hallmarks of Heaney’s poetics. A long poem about Sweeney, King of the Ulsters who is cursed by the powerful cleric, Ronan, after he is wronged and almost killed by the king. Seamus Heaney, “The Placeless Heaven: Another Look at Kavanagh”, in The Government of the Tongue: T (...) Times Literary Supplement, June 9, 1966; July 17, 1969; December 15, 1972; August 1, 1975; February 8, 1980; October 31, 1980; November 26, 1982; October 19, 1984; June 26, 1987; July 1-7, 1988; December 6, 1991; October 20, 1995, p. 9. Heaney’s next volume District and Circle (2006) won the T.S. Eliot Prize, the most prestigious poetry award in the UK. Commenting on the volume for the New York Times, critic Brad Leithauser found it remarkably consistent with the rest of Heaney’s oeuvre. But while Heaney’s career may demonstrate an “of-a-pieceness” not common in poetry, Leithauser found that Heaney’s voice still “carries the authenticity and believability of the plainspoken—even though (herein his magic) his words are anything but plainspoken. His stanzas are dense echo chambers of contending nuances and ricocheting sounds. And his is the gift of saying something extraordinary while, line by line, conveying a sense that this is something an ordinary person might actually say.”Author of introduction) Thomas Flanagan, There You Are: Writing on Irish and American Literature and History, edited by Christopher Cahill, New York Review Books, 2003. First published by the Field Day Theatre Company in 1983 and then by Faber and Faber in 1984, Seamu (...) Kerridge, Richard, and Neil Samuels, editors, Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature, Zed (London, England), 1998. Beowulf (1999; Beowulf BE, 2007), SH’s most domineering translation, is the result of an even longer gestation that spanned nearly two decades and spawned many published excerpts (1980s–1990s). After that book was published, SH made further revisions: ‘clearly’ to ‘brightly’ for example, in the text of a 1999 Gallery Press Christmas card ( Beowulf, 51; BE, 109; TSH, 326, l. 1572), and, invited to contribute to an anthology titled Irish Writers Against War (2003), adapting some lines into an independent poem titled ‘News of the Raven’ ( Beowulf, 91–5; BE, 195–203; TSH, 359–62, ll. 2897–3027).