![Buile Suibhne. (The Frenzy Of Suibhne) Being The Adventures Of Subhne Geilt, A Middle Irish Romance [Hardcover] 1913 [Hardcov](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51zJ2s8unRL._AC_UL160_SR160,160_.jpg)
The original "crime" is absurd. A noble son of many lords, Ronan Finn, one morning decides out of piety to mark a church, Cell Luinne in Dal Araidhe whose king is Suibhne, son of Colman. The pious man does that out of piety but forgets he should have asked permission first. He is expelled, his bell is broken and his psalter is thrown into the lake by Suibhne who is stark naked because he escaped his wife Eorann who was holding his cloak. That's the first meaning of this tale: under feudal law no one could do anything in any territory without the permission of the local squire, king, baron, or whatever feudal lord. This is the inheritance of an older order of things and at the same time a rule that will survive in the new feudal order.
Ronan Flinn then curses Suibhne in the name of God to become crazy, remain stark naked all the time and live like birds in trees. He will eventually grow feathers. This is the second order that is emerging: the order of God, God as the master of all things and his order cannot be questioned by anyone. This tale is thus the tale of the Christianization of Ireland, all the more so because the name of the church "cell" is not at all a church but a "cell(ar)", a room in Latin, hence the name of a Roman temple, of a pagan temple. This name is common in all Celtic areas who have been under Roman and later Roman Catholic influence, for example "Novacelles" in the Central Mountain of France, with an old Romanesque church built on some Roman temple, meaning "new cell(ar)". And the punishment from God is terrible.
Then it is the long story of Suibhne flying to and fro all over Ireland, eating cress and drinking water. He will come out of his madness once and be "recaptured" by some feudal nobleman and kinsman, but a woman from a mill, the miller's wife maybe, a hag as she is called, and she will end up in the hands of the devil after killing herself by trying to fly like Suibhne, will provoke him in the name of Jesus Christ this time and he will fall back into his madness. This time his madness comes from the fact that he wants to satisfy a challenge that is given to him in the name of Christ. The religious dimension of this madness then is clear.
After that he will be called "the king, the saint, the saintly madman". And he will go back to a church where a cleric, Moling, who was associated to Ronan Flinn, is living, and he will finally find some peace, some comfort in the form of some milk given to him every morning beyond some hedge at the limit of the milking space of Moling's farm by the wife of the herdsman. But some other woman, out of jealousy, will tell the husband his wife is with another man, and the herdsman, without checking his information, will pierce Suibhne's chest under the left nipple and Suibhne will die of it
This is the last level of the tale: people must not react out of anger or jealousy or whatever passion if not deadly sin, but must think first and check their information. In this case the herdsman is deprived of his life span, in other words is executed, and he is sent to hell for his punishment for the killing of the saintly madman. The saintly madman is taken into the church after confession and communion and is buried as a saint in the cemetery of the church by the cleric who was with Ronan at the very beginning. The cycle then ends up with forgiveness for Suibhne, and punishment for his murderer.
This story is thus the story of the slow Christianization of Ireland within the emerging context of feudalism. The story of the madman is a full representation of this double line and the triumph of the Christian line within feudalism. It is of course slightly repetitive but some passages, lays and odes are evoking nature, the birds, the trees, the animals of the forest, particularly the stags and that evocation of the trees and the inhabitants of the forest and the tress themselves, just like the curse Suibhne is the victim of, is in a purely Celtic tradition wince the Celtic Ogham alphabet was built from the names of various trees.
This story does not bring much to Flann O'Brien's novel "At Swim-Two-Birds" but it is one deep root of the novel and of Irish literature. In Flann O'Brien's novel it becomes absolutely derisive of the context into which it is injected as if it tried to tell us that these characters, authors and students in the novel are really mediocre figments of some imagination deeply soaked in comfort and that they cannot even know the starting point of the beginning of real suffering like that of Sweeny, as they call him.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
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