The ancient figure and the modern author. A name carried forward.
In the seventh century, a king named Suibhne was cursed at the battle of Mag Rath and driven into the trees. He lost his throne, his mind, his place among men. What he gained was poetry — verse born from cold branches, rushing water, and a long argument with God about whether exile is punishment or gift. The Irish tradition calls his story Buile Suibhne, the Frenzy of Sweeney.
Centuries later, the MacSweeney gallowglass carried the name to Donegal, building Doe Castle on Sheephaven Bay and holding it through wars, plantations, and the slow weathering of Gaelic Ireland. They adopted Suibhne as ancestor — not by blood, but by claim. A spiritual lineage. The wild king became their founding story.
I carry the name too. Whether the thread connecting a seventh-century king to a twenty-first-century writer is genealogy or myth or something in between, the name is the bridge. This project is an attempt to walk across it — to retell the old story in prose, to trace the ancestry in the landscape, and to ask what it means when a name outlives every person who bore it.
This essay explores Merlin and Suibhne as liminal figures — pushed to the edge of time, society, and self, then becoming voices of warning and vision. It frames enchantment, captivity, and the disciplines that keep us human.
Read the essay
S. S. Sweeney
(Seraphim Scott Sweeney)
S. S. Sweeney (Seraphim Scott Sweeney) is a writer working at the meeting point of medieval story, Christian imagination, and the wild edge of the Isles. Born at Tibbetts Point — his father a lighthouse keeper — he grew into a tradition of watchfulness, prayer, and the keeping of light.
He is currently writing Sweeney in Flight, a prose retelling drawn from Buile Suibhne (The Frenzy of Sweeney), alongside essays that trace the saints, manuscripts, and mythic echoes surrounding the tale. He publishes updates and excerpts as they reach a finished cadence.
A brief reading map that follows the Sweeney ↔ Merlin motif thread: wildness, exile, and the tension between prophecy and poetry. Start with the voice, move through historical framing, then widen to comparative tradition.
A modern "version" of Buile Suibhne that prioritizes poetic force and readability over strict literalism. It's often the best entry point if you want to hear Sweeney's voice—cadence, image, and emotional temperature—before returning to more scholarly editions.
Notes / Review: Coming soon
A historically grounded study that situates Merlin traditions in a specific Dark Age context, teasing apart later romance layers from earlier material. Useful alongside Sweeney because it models how legend, place, and politics braid together—and why the "mad/prophetic exile" persists across traditions.
Notes / Review: Coming soon
A wide-ranging exploration of Merlin traditions that treats "Merlin" less as a single character and more as a recurring pattern in early medieval story-worlds. Included here because it draws a provocative line between the Merlin complex and Sweeney's tradition—inviting careful comparison rather than quick equivalence.
Notes / Review: Coming soon