This is a story around a new instalment in the reception of a medieval Irish text known as ‘Buile Shuibne’ or, in English, ‘the madness (or fury) of Sweeney’, elements of which are said to date back to the ninth century. The received version comes from about the early thirteenth century.¹ There’s scarce an Irish poet or scholar who hasn’t tried their hand at translating it, from Padraic Colum to John Kinsella, Patricia Monaghan to Greg Delanty, and, most famously, Seamus Heaney.

Without getting too entangled in the thicket, between Roman ‘civitas’ and pagan tradition, spear-points and psalter-retrieving otters, for present purposes, let’s just say, Shuibne mac Cólmain Chúair, King of Dál nAraidi, has a curse laid on him by Saint Rónán. The saint has marked out the bounds of a church on Shuibne’s turf and Shuibne is having none of it. But St Rónán (Rónán Finn mac Beraig: a conflation of Rónán Finn mac Sáráin of Colla Fochrích, associated with Magheralin, Co. Down, and Rónán mac Beraig of Uí Néill, abbot and patron of Dromiskin, Co. Louth) has the better of the confrontation. His curse drives Shuibne mad. In his madness, he deserts a battlefield and loses everything: his kingdom, his devoted wife, not least his regalia and raiment, and of course his right mind. It is in many ways a tale of the new Roman world order triumphing over the old. It is also an invaluable repository of medieval Irish poetry.

Transfigured into a bird-like creature, Shuibne flits hither and thither, stark naked, all across, around and beyond the island ...