Sweeney, the Frenzy of

12th‐century Irish text surviving in one 17th‐ and one 18th‐century manuscript. Mixing prose and verse, it tells of the madness that overtook Sweeney, an Ulster king, at the 7th‐century battle of Mag Rath (Moira, Co. Down) as a result of the curse of St Ronan, whose psalter he had cast into a lake. Sweeney flies from perch to perch in Ireland and Scotland, living off berries and alternately cursing his condition and praising the landscape in a series of impassioned lyrics. In ...

12th‐century Irish text surviving in one 17th‐ and one 18th‐century manuscript. Mixing prose and verse, it tells of the madness that overtook Sweeney, an Ulster king, at the 7th‐century battle of Mag Rath (Moira, Co. Down) as a result of the curse of St Ronan, whose psalter he had cast into a lake. Sweeney flies from perch to perch in Ireland and Scotland, living off berries and alternately cursing his condition and praising the landscape in a series of impassioned lyrics. In ...