SUIBHNE’S LEVITY
The Annals of the Four Masters recounts that Suibhne, king of Kildare, has a taste for the things of this world. He is a simple man. Simple happiness and simple pleasures are his way. He is heavy and coarse, with nasty fair hair on his head like moss on a stone — and no delicacy of mind or soul. He wages war, he eats, he laughs, and for the rest he is like the brown bull of Cúailnge which covers fifty heifers a day. Fin Barr the abbot follows close behind this human monolith, and tries to remind him that the hereafter reckons even the thickness of a hair. The thickness of the soul is worse. Fin Barr lived for nine years at the tip of a headland, and nine more years on the lake, at Gougane Barra, with the seagulls and the crows: he is all mind and hands of glass. Curiously, he loves Suibhne because Suibhne is like a bull or a rock that might possibly have a soul. And Suibhne loves Fin Barr, who makes him feel, beyond the joys of this world, the joy of having a soul.
Fin Barr’s brother is the king of Lismore. In the month of May, Suibhne takes up arms against the neighboring king. The pretext is unimportant: what Suibhne wants is the king’s drinking cup, his fat cattle, and his wives. He also wants to stretch his legs and to ride his horse through the spring. He has sought the advice of Fin Barr, who said, “Kings go to war with one another, it’s the rule. Make war on the king of Lismore since he’s a king. But if you are victorious, spare my brother — who is your brother too, for are we not like brothers, you and I?” Suibhne is in excellent spirits, and he promises.
The weather is fine when they set out. They have bossed shields and polished scabbards. The army in the sunshine is like a gleaming stream. The war dogs chase butterflies. Suibhne sings at the top of his voice; his horse is thickset like him, and together they look like a hill with moss on the top. Fin Barr is also happy. There is blood beating in his hands of glass. He says to himself that in delight and contentment the thick soul of the king almost has delicacy and is at any rate clear; indeed, at that moment the king turns, looks round for him, sees him, and makes a very delicate sign with his hand. So, thinks Fin Barr, I shall save this soul — and if I save this one, the mountains too shall be saved.
The decades of the king of Lismore are deployed on the edge of the oak forests of Killarney. It’s dawn, with the sweet breath of the woods. On the largest horse, in the midst of the handsomest warriors, with a crow’s feather in his helmet, Suibhne can see the king, his equal. Suibhne himself wears a white feather, but the rest is the same. He’s glad that the two kings are handsome. Above them there hangs a great silence, great expectancy, and the day breaking over the dew in May. The first cuckoo can be heard. Then it can no longer be heard, for Suibhne has raised his arm and his gesture unleashes a blast of thunder. All day long, one step at a time, filled with happiness he moves closer to the crow’s feather. By five o’clock, the decades of both men are scattered along the edge of the wood, and they are now face to face: they look at each other, they laugh, they draw breath again with a kind of roar. The wholesome frenzy of war that Suibhne feels is suddenly mixed with another. The king with the black feather is the image of his brother, slender and hard like him, but with hands of iron instead of fragile glass: and this, strangely, increases his frenzy ten times over. Before the other man, who is still laughing, has raised his shield, he runs his body through with his sword. He finishes him off with an ax.
Faced with the body his intoxication drains away. Suibhne’s soul returns to him.
The cuckoos call to one another through the forest.
In a clearing, the king sits on the moss, unlaced and groggy. His head hangs down. He raises it. Fin Barr is standing in front of him. Suibhne looks at him like a guilty child. For a long time Fin Barr says nothing; then he curses him. And to finish he says, “Your only brothers shall be the wolves in the depths of the forest. You have no more soul than they.” Fin Barr turns on his heels, and Suibhne follows him like a dog. At the camp he sits down on the ground, his head obstinately lowered, thinking.
In the evening, the soldiers round the fires suddenly see the king get up and flee into the forest like a wolf. He does not return.
Nine years pass. Fin Barr, the abbot of Kildare, is looking for beams to fortify the abbey: in the oak forests of Killarney he walks from bole to bole with his churls. They look upward, they compare, and they choose. In the fork of an oak tree that is too gnarled to be used as wood for making beams, Fin Barr sees, at the center of what he first took to be a tuft of mistletoe, a pair of laughing eyes which come to life and compose a face: it’s a man, who raises his hand and makes a small, delicate gesture to the abbot. It’s the king.
He leaps to the ground. He has a crow on his shoulder, which from time to time, when the king moves, flaps its wings a little and then very seriously smooths its feathers. Suibhne kisses Fin Barr; he laughs; he strokes him — but he cannot reply to his questions: he no longer has the use of words. Yet he seems to talk to his crow in a sort of jargon to which the other replies in the jargon of crows. And when the dialogue stops, the king sings softly, almost without pausing. He seems prodigiously happy and busy with his happy task. All day he follows Fin Barr and his churls, hopping along behind them like a crow himself. When they halt, he goes in search of berries and cress for them, and he devours it all with the same avid glee he had for the fare of kings, and the crow eats from his mouth. The churls are delighted. Fin Barr is moved; he strokes the ball of mistletoe and black feathers that was once a king. He says to himself that the king hasn’t changed at all. In the evening he holds the large hand for a long time in his own long hand, lets it fall, and Suibhne hops away toward the woods, as if he were about to fly off. They will not see each other again before the bird of Death comes upon each of them.
The Annals of the Four Masters says that through the workings of Grace, King Suibhne has become a bird: that his feathers were given by the angels, that he catches the holy dove on the wing and speaks the divine word in the jargon of crows; that he is a saint and a madman, a thing of God. This is not entirely the opinion of Fin Barr, who returns to Kilmore in the melancholy evening on a cart that creaks beneath the weight of the undressed timber, his weary churls already asleep on the floor of the tumbril. Fin Barr doesn’t know what to think. He is glad that Suibhne enjoys the state of sylvan tramp as much as that of king, that his joy is invincible and manifold like that of God. But he cannot decide whether it comes from the soul. A little woodcutter at the abbot’s feet talks in his sleep, piteously, as if he were in distress. He is at the mercy of his soul. Is the soul what makes you moan in the dark? thinks Finbar. Or is it what makes you laugh and dance against all reason? My king, whom I cursed, embraced with passion the only joy that was within his grasp. Is this what it is to be a saint? Is it what it is to be a beast? Is it what it is to be at the mercy of the soul, or in thrall to the body? Only God knows, and the Four Masters, who have the ear of God.