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Sweeney Astray
Sweeney Astray is Seamus Heaney's version of the medieval Irish work Buile Suibne. Its here, Mad Sweeney, undergoes a series of purgatorial adventures after he is cursed by a saint and turned into a bird at the Battle of Moira. Heaney's translation not only restores to us a work of historical and literary importance but offers the genius of one of our greatest living poets to reinforce its claims on the reader of contemporary literature.
96 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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About the author
Seamus Heaney
375 books1,074 followersWorks of Irish poet Seamus Justin Heaney reflect landscape, culture, and political crises of his homeland and include the collections
Wintering Out
(1972) and
Field Work
(1979) as well as a translation of
Beowulf
(1999). He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1995.
This writer and lecturer won this prize "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."
Heaney on Wikipedia.
This writer and lecturer won this prize "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past."
Heaney on Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 69 reviews
October 21, 2020
When I read Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf I already knew the story and had read other versions previously. This was not the case with his translation of Sweeney Astray; I had heard of ‘Mad Sweeney’ but that was as far as it went.
This being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this chronicle and the verse is wonderful. In fact, my only ‘criticism’ of the book, if you can even call it that, is that it wasn’t all in verse, as the prose sections didn’t flow as well as the sections in verse.
This being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this chronicle and the verse is wonderful. In fact, my only ‘criticism’ of the book, if you can even call it that, is that it wasn’t all in verse, as the prose sections didn’t flow as well as the sections in verse.
February 9, 2019
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.
Consumed by fear thanks to the curse:
The ‘strange migrations’ come to pass, as Sweeney travels naked through the land, afraid of capture and surviving on watercress. Mixing brief snippets of narrative that propel the story forward, along with longer pieces of poetry, mostly compositions by Sweeney in lamentation of one thing or another, his unusual adventure of flight progresses:
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:
What I particularly enjoyed is the conversion I experienced from being appalled by Sweeney’s irrational and unjustified actions at the start towards the Cleric, to being sympathetic to this madman’s curse and plight at all that he had lost. I suppose the moral is to act justly or suffer the consequence. Yet, by stripping him of everything worldly, tangible and intangible, did he then not become closer to god than the Cleric? In his suffering and transformation from lamentations to, eventually, some praises, did he not become humble and pious?
Consumed by fear thanks to the curse:
His brain convulsed,
his mind split open.
Vertigo, hysteria, lurchings
and launchings came over him,
he staggered and flapped desperately,
he was revolted by the thought of known places
and dreamed strange migrations.
…
The ‘strange migrations’ come to pass, as Sweeney travels naked through the land, afraid of capture and surviving on watercress. Mixing brief snippets of narrative that propel the story forward, along with longer pieces of poetry, mostly compositions by Sweeney in lamentation of one thing or another, his unusual adventure of flight progresses:
To-night the snow is cold
I was at the end of my tether
but hunger and bother
are endless.
Look at me, broken
and down-at-heel,
Sweeny from Rasharkin.
Look at me now
always shifting,
making fresh pads,
and always at night.
At times I am afraid.
In the grip of dread
I would launch and sail
beyond the known seas.
I am the madman of Glen Bolcain,
wind-scourged, stripped
like a winter tree
clad in black frost
and frozen snow.
…
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:
Of all innocent lairs I made
the length and breadth of Ireland
I remember an open bed
above the lough in Mourne.
Of all innocent lairs I made
the length and breadth of Ireland
I remember bedding down
Above the wood in Glen Bolcain.
To you, Christ, I give thanks
for your Body in communion.
Whatever evil I have done
in this world, I repent.
What I particularly enjoyed is the conversion I experienced from being appalled by Sweeney’s irrational and unjustified actions at the start towards the Cleric, to being sympathetic to this madman’s curse and plight at all that he had lost. I suppose the moral is to act justly or suffer the consequence. Yet, by stripping him of everything worldly, tangible and intangible, did he then not become closer to god than the Cleric? In his suffering and transformation from lamentations to, eventually, some praises, did he not become humble and pious?
June 8, 2016
"Sweeney Astray" is Seamus Heaney's version of a very old Irish poem that sounds strikingly modern. Sweeney, the King of Dal-Arie, becomes involved in a territorial dispute with the priest Ronan. After Sweeney killed one of Ronan's priests, the cleric cursed the king, who, at the battle of Moria suddenly lost his wits and courage and fled, the text says, like a bird, literally. He spent the rest of his life mostly in trees, eating watercress and often speaking in poems, many of which lament his fate, his fear and homelessness. Despite attempts to bring him home by his wife and his loyal countryman Sweeney remained naked in the wild until his death in a manner consistent with Ronan's curse. Heaney attributes the story to a clash between the native Celtic religion and the new Christianity, but with its story of spells and magic, I think that it is likely one of those old myths recast by adherents of the new religion. And one also senses in it an early acknowledgement, like that of Sophocle's Ajax, of the chaos that war can inflict on the mind. Sweeney's story has been taken up by a wide variety of modern writers, none of them Irish beside Heaney: T.S. Eliot used his name for a series of poems, he has a few cameos in Neil Gaiman's "American Gods", and one senses the influence on Italo Calvino's "The Baron in the Trees" and on Joseph Heller's naked, reluctant Yossarian. Heaney admits to some tidying up of the text, some omitted lines, some clarification of textual difficulties. His rendering of the narrative and the poems (some of which are in the form of dialogue between Sweeney and other characters) is clean and unobtrusive. Many translations of Celtic arcana, the "Mabinogian", for instance, come across as musty and muddled, only half-visible in the darkness that covers forgotten motives and symbols, but not this one. Heaney manages that very difficult feat, of rescuing a powerful story from antiquity and making it clear and compelling.
July 3, 2023
159th book of 2020.
The medieval Irish work Buile Suibhne was left untranslated from 1913 till Seamus Heaney published this, Sweeney Astray, in 1983. Heaney breathed new life into it for the contemporary audience. The hero of the poem is Mad Sweeney, who is cursed at the Battle of Moira; he is turned into a bird and flees. The Mad Sweeney from Gaiman's American Gods is based (quite loosely) off Buile Suibhne, which is perhaps the only other reference to the poem I can think of. The blurb of my old Faber & Faber edition states, "The poetry spoken by the mad king, exiled to the trees and the slopes, is among the richest and most immediately appealing in the whole canon of Gaelic literature."
The poem is mostly plotless. The poem's catalyst is Sweeney's curse and metamorphosis, but from there, Sweeney journeys across Ireland (and beyond) and the poem becomes an ode to the landscape as much as it does his character and arc. Ireland is at the heart of the poem. The American photographer Rachel Giese (now Rachel Brown) accompanies Heaney's poem with incredible, dramatic photographs of Northern Ireland in her subsequent publication called Sweeney in Flight. Her photographs cover the boundaries of Mad Sweeney's old kingdom, Dal-Arie.
The poem is partly in verse and also prose, oscillating between the forms as the story progresses. There are 87 "stanzas". Sweeney spends months, years, flying from place to place and meeting hosts of characters, most notably, another madman, Alan.
Sweeney is cursed because of his actions, breaking the laws of the battle at Moira, and though his fate is deserved, we come to pity him in his wanderings.
Though I found Heaney's writing less dramatic and piercing than in his debut collection, Death of a Naturalist, I still think he was the perfect writer to take on the tale. It is reminiscent of Hughes' Crow, with the same power of nature throbbing in the undercurrents of every verse. It is a long, bumbling poem like a river, following Mad Sweeney as he goes. With Giese's photography, the poem is even more brilliant, no doubt. Soon, I will spend the money (it is quite expensive) to get a copy of her Sweeney in Flight.
The medieval Irish work Buile Suibhne was left untranslated from 1913 till Seamus Heaney published this, Sweeney Astray, in 1983. Heaney breathed new life into it for the contemporary audience. The hero of the poem is Mad Sweeney, who is cursed at the Battle of Moira; he is turned into a bird and flees. The Mad Sweeney from Gaiman's American Gods is based (quite loosely) off Buile Suibhne, which is perhaps the only other reference to the poem I can think of. The blurb of my old Faber & Faber edition states, "The poetry spoken by the mad king, exiled to the trees and the slopes, is among the richest and most immediately appealing in the whole canon of Gaelic literature."
The poem is mostly plotless. The poem's catalyst is Sweeney's curse and metamorphosis, but from there, Sweeney journeys across Ireland (and beyond) and the poem becomes an ode to the landscape as much as it does his character and arc. Ireland is at the heart of the poem. The American photographer Rachel Giese (now Rachel Brown) accompanies Heaney's poem with incredible, dramatic photographs of Northern Ireland in her subsequent publication called Sweeney in Flight. Her photographs cover the boundaries of Mad Sweeney's old kingdom, Dal-Arie.
The poem is partly in verse and also prose, oscillating between the forms as the story progresses. There are 87 "stanzas". Sweeney spends months, years, flying from place to place and meeting hosts of characters, most notably, another madman, Alan.
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. Someimtes 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?
Sweeney is cursed because of his actions, breaking the laws of the battle at Moira, and though his fate is deserved, we come to pity him in his wanderings.
Son of God, have mercy on us!
Never to hear a human voice!
To sleep naked every night
up there in the highest thickets,
to have lost my proper shape and looks,
a mad scuttler on mountain peaks,
a derelict doomed to loneliness:
Son of God, have mercy on us!
Though I found Heaney's writing less dramatic and piercing than in his debut collection, Death of a Naturalist, I still think he was the perfect writer to take on the tale. It is reminiscent of Hughes' Crow, with the same power of nature throbbing in the undercurrents of every verse. It is a long, bumbling poem like a river, following Mad Sweeney as he goes. With Giese's photography, the poem is even more brilliant, no doubt. Soon, I will spend the money (it is quite expensive) to get a copy of her Sweeney in Flight.
February 23, 2017
Eh, Sweeney had it coming.
July 27, 2022
A fascinating work of un-categorizable medieval literature that combines, juxtaposes, and cherishes contradiction: poetry v. prose, narrative v. lyric, madness v. sanity, war bravery v. bird-like fear, here v. there, heroism v. ignominy, saintliness v. sinning, etc etc.
I came to it from Steven Moore’s terrific The Novel, an Alternate History (although I’ve owned a copy of Sweeney Astray since my grad. school days as a medievalist) and couldn’t be more pleased I did. I’m not sure if its prosimetric format exactly qualifies it as an early novel—it rather reminds me of Dante’s Vita Nova (sic, the edition of G. Gorni) wherein the prose is subservient to the verse, acting as a connecting thread to bring a series of poems together in order to add a narrative frame to the lyrical imagination’s momentary rather than time-bound immediacy and abstraction out of the continuum. I see others here have found this merely repetitious. But I, who like Moore in his criticism, revel in the beauties of literary experimentation, find a constantly inspiring other worldview in medieval literature. Moore is quite right to include Sweeny Astray in his study as the novel form is flexible enough to include such un-followed exemplary roads—Christ, people, get over your adherence to realistic fiction and the so-called classic novel. Time will sweep that form away eventually too, taking the hacks along with it!
Most exciting here, as I noted above, are the strange and often irreconcilable contradictions and impossibilities that abound in Sweeney’s strange state as man/bird living a novelistic tale which he himself continually expresses in lyrics—dare I say it? Singing like the bird he is (flying too, apparently, perching in trees and eating watercress, so much watercress!). Another interesting theme is happiness/sadness for, in all of Sweeney’s quite reasonable ravings, is a constant attention to his feelings about things. (Most of the dialogue scenes, when Sweeney encounters farmers, priests, even ladies in his travels, deal with others mistaking his madness for joy or sharing his disgraceful fear—seems like it’s really fear that’s considered madness here as most of Sweeney’s spoken words are quite rational. It’s just that his fear won’t let him stay dressed, interact consistently with others, or stop flitting from tree to tree.) By turns he’s miserable living like a frightened animal and/or reveling so much in certain loci amoeni and the beauties of nature that it’s hard to believe he’d prefer to be clothed in war weeds and killing his fellow man as the soldier king he once was.
Our own loyalties as readers are also put to the test: since we spend so much time with the beautiful verses and sad lamentations of the man himself, how can we situate Ronan Finn, the priest (evil bell-ringer that he is), who curses Sweeney, as anything other than the villain here? It’s a sad religion that can only curse and torture those who don’t believe in it—or have other, more important things to do. (And let’s face it, is there anything more annoying than the ringing of a pissy little bell and calling people to prayer?)
Sweeney Astray is a much more challenging text than our modern era’s more simple juxtaposing of nature and culture such as Calvino’s Baron in the Trees, which, I can only surmise, was inspired by this Irish medieval tale. Off now to read Flann O'Brien’s At Swim-two-Birds now that I’ve been taught what the title means.
I came to it from Steven Moore’s terrific The Novel, an Alternate History (although I’ve owned a copy of Sweeney Astray since my grad. school days as a medievalist) and couldn’t be more pleased I did. I’m not sure if its prosimetric format exactly qualifies it as an early novel—it rather reminds me of Dante’s Vita Nova (sic, the edition of G. Gorni) wherein the prose is subservient to the verse, acting as a connecting thread to bring a series of poems together in order to add a narrative frame to the lyrical imagination’s momentary rather than time-bound immediacy and abstraction out of the continuum. I see others here have found this merely repetitious. But I, who like Moore in his criticism, revel in the beauties of literary experimentation, find a constantly inspiring other worldview in medieval literature. Moore is quite right to include Sweeny Astray in his study as the novel form is flexible enough to include such un-followed exemplary roads—Christ, people, get over your adherence to realistic fiction and the so-called classic novel. Time will sweep that form away eventually too, taking the hacks along with it!
Most exciting here, as I noted above, are the strange and often irreconcilable contradictions and impossibilities that abound in Sweeney’s strange state as man/bird living a novelistic tale which he himself continually expresses in lyrics—dare I say it? Singing like the bird he is (flying too, apparently, perching in trees and eating watercress, so much watercress!). Another interesting theme is happiness/sadness for, in all of Sweeney’s quite reasonable ravings, is a constant attention to his feelings about things. (Most of the dialogue scenes, when Sweeney encounters farmers, priests, even ladies in his travels, deal with others mistaking his madness for joy or sharing his disgraceful fear—seems like it’s really fear that’s considered madness here as most of Sweeney’s spoken words are quite rational. It’s just that his fear won’t let him stay dressed, interact consistently with others, or stop flitting from tree to tree.) By turns he’s miserable living like a frightened animal and/or reveling so much in certain loci amoeni and the beauties of nature that it’s hard to believe he’d prefer to be clothed in war weeds and killing his fellow man as the soldier king he once was.
Our own loyalties as readers are also put to the test: since we spend so much time with the beautiful verses and sad lamentations of the man himself, how can we situate Ronan Finn, the priest (evil bell-ringer that he is), who curses Sweeney, as anything other than the villain here? It’s a sad religion that can only curse and torture those who don’t believe in it—or have other, more important things to do. (And let’s face it, is there anything more annoying than the ringing of a pissy little bell and calling people to prayer?)
Sweeney Astray is a much more challenging text than our modern era’s more simple juxtaposing of nature and culture such as Calvino’s Baron in the Trees, which, I can only surmise, was inspired by this Irish medieval tale. Off now to read Flann O'Brien’s At Swim-two-Birds now that I’ve been taught what the title means.
January 3, 2024
about holy fools and madness and love of a place. soooooo good
March 2, 2019
*3.5*
"local man fucks up but repents at the last minute"
considering my first seamus heaney read to have been his Beowulf translation, i was quite excited to pick up another translated work by him.
like beowulf, there are several extant manuscripts of the original tale (found as buile shuibhne in the original gaellic irish--all these irish common nouns only remind me of that time i tried learning irish through duolingo and awfully failed) although heaney based his translation mainly in the 1913 translation by j. g. o'keeffe. which goes to say this wasn't the most riveting of tales. however, the structure of "this happened and he said this poem" repeating itself over and over again almost ends up growing in you by the end.
what interested me the most about this work (besides heaney's ability to inject his own poetic expertise to such ancient works) was the seeming clash and merging of catholic and pagan traditions. the tale begins with sweeney attacking a saint for chiming his bell in his territory and then blessing him and his troop with holy water--a catholic making his presence known in a non-catholic area, makes sense. in retaliation, the saint curses sweeney--which, in my book, doesn't sound like the most catholic way of responding. i might be a bit rusty in the whole mass thing but i don't remember hexes and curses being part of my cathechism. sweeney, eventually, gets turned into a half-bird monster left to wander the british isles forever until repenting and receiving a christian burial.
to me, this blending of traditions was fascinating. by the end of the story, sweeney is taken in by another saint but, as he doesn't want to step inside the saint's home, they can only feed him by leaving a plate of milk outside for him. a detail that could have easily passed unnoticed unless you know leaving a plate of milk and food outside was a very common irish tradition-- to feed the fairies . not the annoying chieftains and certainly not done by the priests.
emotionally speaking, there's not much to take from this little book. in terms of academia, i would say there's plenty.
"local man fucks up but repents at the last minute"
considering my first seamus heaney read to have been his Beowulf translation, i was quite excited to pick up another translated work by him.
like beowulf, there are several extant manuscripts of the original tale (found as buile shuibhne in the original gaellic irish--all these irish common nouns only remind me of that time i tried learning irish through duolingo and awfully failed) although heaney based his translation mainly in the 1913 translation by j. g. o'keeffe. which goes to say this wasn't the most riveting of tales. however, the structure of "this happened and he said this poem" repeating itself over and over again almost ends up growing in you by the end.
what interested me the most about this work (besides heaney's ability to inject his own poetic expertise to such ancient works) was the seeming clash and merging of catholic and pagan traditions. the tale begins with sweeney attacking a saint for chiming his bell in his territory and then blessing him and his troop with holy water--a catholic making his presence known in a non-catholic area, makes sense. in retaliation, the saint curses sweeney--which, in my book, doesn't sound like the most catholic way of responding. i might be a bit rusty in the whole mass thing but i don't remember hexes and curses being part of my cathechism. sweeney, eventually, gets turned into a half-bird monster left to wander the british isles forever until repenting and receiving a christian burial.
to me, this blending of traditions was fascinating. by the end of the story, sweeney is taken in by another saint but, as he doesn't want to step inside the saint's home, they can only feed him by leaving a plate of milk outside for him. a detail that could have easily passed unnoticed unless you know leaving a plate of milk and food outside was a very common irish tradition-- to feed the fairies . not the annoying chieftains and certainly not done by the priests.
emotionally speaking, there's not much to take from this little book. in terms of academia, i would say there's plenty.
January 21, 2021
Not really an Ireland guy but this was pretty cool. I like the idea of going mad and thinking you're a bird as a way of understanding medieval ptsd.
July 25, 2022
This was an extremely enjoyable, yet challenging read. The story of the mad king Sweeney’s wanderings is full of complex imagery and intricate verse, the kind of work that requires multiple readings to fully grasp. Yet it’s an interesting and enjoyable read, particularly thanks to Heaney’s ever-masterful translation. Of particular note are the stunningly evocative poems recited by Sweeney throughout this work, brought to life in this translation, that plum the depths of human emotion and sanity.
May 1, 2009
This story is a combination of narrative and verse and tells a story based somewhat on historical events in 637 AD. Like gossip, the story takes on a life of its own.
Sweeney, an Irish king insults and assaults a priest. (His wife tries to deter him by grabbing his cloak, but he gets out and makes his assault buck naked.) The king then is called to battle, which he loses. The priest puts a curse on him, and he goes mad, grows feathers and leaps and flies all over Ireland subsisting on watercress and water, living in treetops and crags. He has a leaping contest with a hag and is pursued by bleeding headless bodies and disembodied goat and dog heads.
His madness brings him the gifts and hardship of living in the natural world. He suffers a yearning for the constraints and comforts of the church, family and politics, but cannot abandon his love of nature and the land for them.
This "madness" has sanity.
Sweeney, an Irish king insults and assaults a priest. (His wife tries to deter him by grabbing his cloak, but he gets out and makes his assault buck naked.) The king then is called to battle, which he loses. The priest puts a curse on him, and he goes mad, grows feathers and leaps and flies all over Ireland subsisting on watercress and water, living in treetops and crags. He has a leaping contest with a hag and is pursued by bleeding headless bodies and disembodied goat and dog heads.
His madness brings him the gifts and hardship of living in the natural world. He suffers a yearning for the constraints and comforts of the church, family and politics, but cannot abandon his love of nature and the land for them.
This "madness" has sanity.
December 20, 2024
There was a month or two this year when I was pretty uncontactable and without much free time. This is one of the books I read in that period, and kinda forgot about it until this morning when i saw it on my bookshelves.
This was actually pretty good. A strange, translated medieval Irish epic with some very not-subtle allegory. Medieval lit is just like that. Certainly not my favourite Heaney, but it's still full of his stylish syntax.
This was actually pretty good. A strange, translated medieval Irish epic with some very not-subtle allegory. Medieval lit is just like that. Certainly not my favourite Heaney, but it's still full of his stylish syntax.
November 28, 2024
2.5⭐️
I like the vibe of old Ireland it feels folklore-y. The story itself is really weird I struggled to define what was actually happening. The poems sometimes felt really random and I think I read that Heaney put a lot of poems in where they weren’t originally which would make sense. Overall it was decent but not something I would willingly read again in my spare time.
I like the vibe of old Ireland it feels folklore-y. The story itself is really weird I struggled to define what was actually happening. The poems sometimes felt really random and I think I read that Heaney put a lot of poems in where they weren’t originally which would make sense. Overall it was decent but not something I would willingly read again in my spare time.
September 14, 2025
Shockingly beautiful, hauntingly complex. A wild ride of blessing and cursing, madness and sanity, nature and civilization.
I’m going to have to spend more time with this book (and with the original English translation by O’Keeffe).
Highly, highly,highly recommend.
I’m going to have to spend more time with this book (and with the original English translation by O’Keeffe).
Highly, highly,highly recommend.
September 19, 2024
i will read absolutely anything seamus heaney writes. i love his storytelling style so much
January 9, 2025
Bad no good book that bastardises the original version. Such an ‘and then’ plot. Obvs there’s some merit to it I just didn’t enjoy it (had to read it for uni)
May 17, 2020
A translation of a medieval Irish poem, Buile Suibhne, which may have been composed around 637 AD, but was not written down until the mid-seventeenth century. The poem is about Sweeney, an Irish king, who angers a priest and is cursed by him. It's not clear to me whether Sweeney becomes a bird (he seems to be able to fly) or whether he is cursed to think he is a bird (he and the other characters refer to him as a "madman"). Or is it both? Though a narrative poem, the story isn't the strongest part of this work. Plot elements are handled rapidly at the beginning and end, but the true heart of this poems is its depictions of Ireland and Scotland, the tensions between humans and nature, and the turmoil of emotions that Sweeney experiences. Heaney's translation captures the beauty of the woodlands, the extremities of pain and anguished experienced by Sweeney, and the ways in which the natural world both heightens Sweeney's pain and serves as a solace to him. It also gives us insight into the tensions between the Celtic experience of the world, and how it interacts with the new Christian influences. Sweeney stands for the pagan Celtic world, a place of strong temper, chaos, and a deep sympathy for nature, while the priest who curses him forces order onto this world. Heaney's poetry is spare, dynamic and very readable -- I recommend this.
October 7, 2018
I first encountered some of these poems and associated prose passages in
Opened Ground
, the mid-'90s selection of work from Heaney's career, and was at the time not terribly enamoured of them. In that volume the aesthetic best of the pieces were selected, and it made them more than a bit obtuse and impenetrable at times — artistically pleasing, perhaps, but narratively adrift.
Taken as a relatively complete whole — a number of lines are omitted for stylistic reasons — in my opinion those same passages don't inspire the same reaction. Though Heaney himself comments that the poem occasionally has some moments of less inspired verse, I found that I had a greater appreciation for the sublime sections when I was less confused over just who the characters speaking were, and what precisely they were talking of.
While I understand why the selections appeared in Opened Ground, the improved ease of comprehension in the longer narrative of Sweeney Astray and the subsequent increased appreciation makes me glad that I didn't act according to my initial feelings after reading it, and instead picked up the full work.
Taken as a relatively complete whole — a number of lines are omitted for stylistic reasons — in my opinion those same passages don't inspire the same reaction. Though Heaney himself comments that the poem occasionally has some moments of less inspired verse, I found that I had a greater appreciation for the sublime sections when I was less confused over just who the characters speaking were, and what precisely they were talking of.
While I understand why the selections appeared in Opened Ground, the improved ease of comprehension in the longer narrative of Sweeney Astray and the subsequent increased appreciation makes me glad that I didn't act according to my initial feelings after reading it, and instead picked up the full work.
November 25, 2019
I found this story/poem entertaining, which is more than I can say for most long poems that I've read. I especially value how this story has been told through the ages, tying back to old Celtic history from the 600s. I didn't always understand some of the motivations of the main character (he's cursed to madness because of his affronts to a priest building a church in Sweeney's country, showing to me that he isn't too happy with Christianity, but then he ends up accepting christ on his deathbed... but I couldn't really figure out how his trials through his madness made him choose to do that). Then again I'm not great at analyzing literature, so that could be my holdup. Either way, I found it enjoyable, and Seamus Heaney is such a renowned poet, that there was no way his translation would have been anything less than fantastic.
July 26, 2013
Really beautiful translation. Granted, Heaney is best known for his Beowulf translation, but he just sits around translating every ol' thing... sort of like our generation's Tolkien. Well written, clever word usage, beautiful story. Sweeney is a war hardened lord who after loosing a battle suffers from what we would identify as PTSD but his medieval world has no word or understanding of this. He goes on another journey constantly putting himself outside of a community as he can't allow himself to rejoin. I'm hoping to use it in my Survival Literature class this fall. I liked it as a read for the summer and would have like to study it in college.
January 11, 2008
This good as it gets version of the Irish medieval saga, Buile Suibhne, isn’t all that good. Sweeney is a not too interesting king who offends a priest, as Ireland sits on the cusp of Christian supremacy, and is turned mad (and into a kind of bird). He flits around the country, fleeing from un-fated dangers until his fated death eventually occurs. Heaney is wonderful but the tale lost whatever tragic potential it carried long ago and works best as a kind of early travelogue of the Irish countryside. A beautiful land, cursed by a dull legend.
October 20, 2013
A friend who shares my love of Flann O'Brien gave me a copy of Heaney's Sweeney many years ago and I thought of it wistfully when Heaney made his last leap a few weeks ago. The story is of Sweeney the Celtic king and his adventures after he is cursed with madness by a cleric. There is no plot to speak of, just a narrative broken by spontaneous verse delivered by Sweeney as he is driven throughout Ireland by his madness and further encounters with the Church. The theme is of relentless persecution, and yet the tone is light, and at times quite funny.
November 21, 2020
Absolutely perplexing prosimetrum. In awe of nature, the land, Ireland being everything in the land that Sweeney's madness brushed up against, intercut with moments resonant for their imagery and their weight: Sweeney in the tree, feathered and mad, brooding over the landscape after the battle; Alan, the Man of the Wood, who knowing the prophecy of his death walks directly toward it.
Takeaway:
Takeaway:
Because Mad Sweeney was a pilgrim
to the lip of every well
and every green-banked, cress-topped stream,
this water's his memorial.
January 17, 2020
Very good. If you analyze and read between the lines you can pick up on many themes of the irish transition from pagan to catholic and how that was interpreted. The wild vs society aka the church. Sweeney is always in conflict with himself and his nature. Poor King Sweeney.There are many beautiful lines of poetry in this tale as well. I am glad I purchased this book for my collection on Irish heritage.
August 6, 2019
I came across a segment in Heaney’s collected poems years ago and found out that the original inspired a portion of Flann O’Brien’s At Swim Two Birds- a text on mental illness that pre-dates Lear and posits the old Irish warrior class against the priestly class - elegant and mournful.
August 5, 2023
British and Irish mythology and folklore seem bottomless sources of literature and inspiration. And in Heaney's hands beauty is born.
June 29, 2022
I really enjoyed this. I have sometimes struggled with Heaney in the past. He’s clearly very good (of course he is!) and with some very Heaneyesque styles and phrasings that he employs fairly liberally in his work, and which sound good to say, a sort of deliciousness to his words, but I often find when reading him that all that just isn’t enough for me, and that it’s all a bit too pointed, too much like poetry collapsing in upon itself as it tries so very hard to be poetic.
With Heaney’s Sweeney this is quite different. From his foreword this seems to be his rendering of someone else’s translation from the original Gaelic. I may have got this wrong, it was a little confusing. But that aside, whether this was from what I think they call a ‘literal’, or that he was doing a ‘version’, I didn’t mind. And he didn’t Heaney it up too much. It felt like he was pretty grounded in the original [it felt like that; I have no way of knowing] and just trying to present it as best he could.
The story itself is really quite fascinating, and not one I knew, about a pompous man/warrior who is cursed in battle and goes mad and goes hopping off all over the land, not really getting up to many adventures, but just trying to survive, usually on watercress [can one survive by just eating watercress?]; and the tale was in a way very repetitive, but none of this seemed to matter. I just liked it.
It rhymes a lot in the verse sections [there are prose sections too, describing simply what has happened, and then verses, often in the form of songs, often retelling what has just been described in the prose], but the rhymes are very simple, mostly unforced, that is not too clever-clever. The rhythms of the verse bits don’t flow very easily, but I think that worked in its favour too. Again, it made them stand out much less than a lot of poetry that is all too eager to point to itself.
I really did enjoy reading it over many days, coming back to it now and again to see where poor mad Sweeney had hopped off to this tie. I’m only docking a star because as a story, well, it didn’t really amount to much. This is not really a negative thing, it is what it is, but it didn’t have a great deal of depth, overall. Still very good though.
With Heaney’s Sweeney this is quite different. From his foreword this seems to be his rendering of someone else’s translation from the original Gaelic. I may have got this wrong, it was a little confusing. But that aside, whether this was from what I think they call a ‘literal’, or that he was doing a ‘version’, I didn’t mind. And he didn’t Heaney it up too much. It felt like he was pretty grounded in the original [it felt like that; I have no way of knowing] and just trying to present it as best he could.
The story itself is really quite fascinating, and not one I knew, about a pompous man/warrior who is cursed in battle and goes mad and goes hopping off all over the land, not really getting up to many adventures, but just trying to survive, usually on watercress [can one survive by just eating watercress?]; and the tale was in a way very repetitive, but none of this seemed to matter. I just liked it.
It rhymes a lot in the verse sections [there are prose sections too, describing simply what has happened, and then verses, often in the form of songs, often retelling what has just been described in the prose], but the rhymes are very simple, mostly unforced, that is not too clever-clever. The rhythms of the verse bits don’t flow very easily, but I think that worked in its favour too. Again, it made them stand out much less than a lot of poetry that is all too eager to point to itself.
I really did enjoy reading it over many days, coming back to it now and again to see where poor mad Sweeney had hopped off to this tie. I’m only docking a star because as a story, well, it didn’t really amount to much. This is not really a negative thing, it is what it is, but it didn’t have a great deal of depth, overall. Still very good though.
September 27, 2019
Sweeney (Suibhne in Irish) was a ferocious war chieftain or ¨king", perhaps in the 9th century A.D. (the songs about him are at least that old), raging in battle and disregarding all the rules of war until the day he defied the holy cleric Ronan Finn, throwing Ronan's sacred psalter into the lake and nearly killing him with his spear. For that, and his dishonoring the Christian deity (which must have been pagan Sweeney's intention), Ronan cursed him, making him bird-like (or maybe even turning him into a bird — there's mention of feathers), and from then on mad Sweeney perched naked in the tree tops, living mainly on watercress and bounding great distances from one part of Ireland to another, even over the sea to the land of the Britons, where he met another madman, Alan, with whom he continued his bird-like ravings until Alan's death. Sweeney was later brought back to sanity by trickery, dropping to the ground when his relative told him that his parents, his wife and son had died (all lies), and thus allowing himself to be shackled until he recovered his senses; but a treacherous hag reminded him of his madness and tempted him to take great leaps again, and off he went again into madness. Finally he was slain by a jealous husband while slurping milk left for him in a cow's stool by his killer's wife. The story as it has reached us, in the first written version (in Irish) in the 17th century, is the product of hundreds of retellings, very probably involving several Sweeneys (the name Suibhne appears in other medieval tales), at some point connected with another legend about the mad Briton Alan, and probably retold as an allegory of madness and the danger of defying God. Or maybe just because people liked the sounds of the verses, which are necessarily lost in this English translation. It is a very curious archeology, suggestive of medieval and later attitudes (women are either loving caretakers, slave girls or vicious hags; watercress is a supreme delicacy; honored men are terribly violent, etc.). But the English version is not something to enjoy for its musicality.
May 5, 2025
I don’t know how to rate a translation of a poem that could be at least 1,300 years old, but I can confirm this version is entirely accessible. And I’m glad I read it because it is a story that has influenced many other stories.
Case in point: on a recent trip to Dublin I wanted to bring back some “new to me” books. I decided on At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien (“a portrayal of Dublin to compare with Joyce’s Ulysses” - so says the blurb on the back) and Tongues of Fire by Seán Hewitt, a book of poetry that was a staff recommendation at Hodges Figgis (super old book store in Dublin). By sheer coincidence, both reference “Mad Sweeney” (Buile Shuibhne in Irish).
I’m a nerd but I have my limits. I am not prepared to tackle reading the original. Especially when such a gifted poet as Seamus Heaney has already taken on the challenge of bringing it into the modern world. And this is how I came to pick up Sweeney Astray (any excuse to buy more books).
Yes, it’s a bit of an odd text. I found it helpful to think of it like a musical from the Middle Ages, without the music. It takes some getting used to.
But I think the point - or the success of this translation (for me) - is that I now feel like I’m familiar with the myth of “Mad Sweeney”. Other than having to wrap my head around how to pronounce certain Irish place names and looking up a handful of words, this was not a massively challenging text.
My personal opinion is that the rewards of reading it far outweigh the effort, and I like that in a book.
Case in point: on a recent trip to Dublin I wanted to bring back some “new to me” books. I decided on At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’Brien (“a portrayal of Dublin to compare with Joyce’s Ulysses” - so says the blurb on the back) and Tongues of Fire by Seán Hewitt, a book of poetry that was a staff recommendation at Hodges Figgis (super old book store in Dublin). By sheer coincidence, both reference “Mad Sweeney” (Buile Shuibhne in Irish).
I’m a nerd but I have my limits. I am not prepared to tackle reading the original. Especially when such a gifted poet as Seamus Heaney has already taken on the challenge of bringing it into the modern world. And this is how I came to pick up Sweeney Astray (any excuse to buy more books).
Yes, it’s a bit of an odd text. I found it helpful to think of it like a musical from the Middle Ages, without the music. It takes some getting used to.
But I think the point - or the success of this translation (for me) - is that I now feel like I’m familiar with the myth of “Mad Sweeney”. Other than having to wrap my head around how to pronounce certain Irish place names and looking up a handful of words, this was not a massively challenging text.
My personal opinion is that the rewards of reading it far outweigh the effort, and I like that in a book.
January 17, 2021
In my view it’s almost sacrilege to criticise a work by Seamus Heaney negatively such was the genius of the man, but “Sweeney Astray” is disappointing. Having read his translations of Sophocles and Beowulf I was looking forward to Heaney’s translation of the Irish medieval epic poem Buile Suibhne. More so because the battle at which Sweeney is turned into a mad demented bird like creature by St. Ronan happened close to the village of Moira, County Down in the year 603 and Moira is where I live. The fact is, however, that the original tale is dull and repetitive and very little of note happens. Whilst there are flashes of Heaney’s poetic skill, even he cannot turn such a turgid text into high poetic art. Heaney himself says as much in his introduction to the work when he admits that he has rendered parts of the original in prose because large sections do not lend themselves to poetic imagery. Unless you are intent on reading all of Heaney’s output this, in my opinion, is a work that could be skipped without missing very much.
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