An Introduction to Early Irish Literature by Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin

Author:Muireann Ní Bhrolcháin [Ní Bhrolcháin, Muireann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Four Courts Press
Published: 2017-06-26T03:00:00+00:00

Madness in Early Irish Literature

The early literature features madness and mad people in many stories, although the latter may also be wise like Shakespeare’s fool. They are said to gather at Gleann Bolcáin in the early period, and Gleann na nGealt is mentioned in later sources; the two places are probably the same, located at Ventry, Co. Kerry.77 Suibne Geilt is the most prominent male figure to lose his reason and live in the wilderness. A second madman, Mac Dá Cherda, is associated with St Cuimine Fota in Imthechta na nÓinmhidí (The Wanderings of the Fools) as they walk the countryside together. Mac Dá Cherda is the son of Mael Ochtraig, king of the Déise on the Suir, and he commits adultery with the wife of his father’s druid. The court jester dies, and the druid offers to produce a new one; the king agrees, and the druid throws a magic wisp into Mac Dá Cherda’s face, and he becomes a fool (óinmit) but he is also filled with God’s grace. He could sleep outside in deep winter and the birds would shelter him from the cold with their wings. But above all he reveals secret information about people: it is he who recognizes Suithchern.

He meets St Cuimine Fota of the Eoganacht Locha Léin, and the saint recites poems praying for news of Mac Dá Cherda, the chief fool who delivers true judgments when in his full senses. They speak in riddles to one another, become foster brothers, and when Cuimine gives him communion Mac Dá Cherda dies and goes to heaven.78

To return to Suibne, he is called the king of Dál nAraide in The Madness of Suibne. He goes mad when a saint curses him and he sees the horrors of battle at Mag Ráith.79 He chooses to live outdoors composing poetry and living a liminal, solitary life. He grows feathers, and from time to time characters from normal society including his wife and St Mo-Ling of Co. Carlow come searching for him and he is killed while drinking milk from a hole in the ground.80 The image of the madman may have developed from that of Suibne, and there is a relationship between madness, hearing voices in the sky and leaping as Cú Chulainn does when Fann leaves him in The Love-Sickness of Cú Chulainn.81 Suibne is going through the liminal stage of the rites of passage encountered by hero or king during a life-changing experience but, like the Fianna, he is doomed to remain there, and when he re-enters the real world, he is killed.82

Mac Dá Cherda also appears in the story of Liadan and Cuirithir where he passes a message to Liadan from Cuirithir and he gives it in riddles because there are other women around her. Later Cuimine says to her: ‘I do not like what you say …/Cuirithir was here, he was not mad,/any more than before he came.’ And she says in her poem: ‘It were madness /for one who’d not do his pleasure,/were there not fear of the king of heaven.

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