Suibhne is Lailoken, Silenus - the wild mad-man sage, probably continuous with the God of the Wild Marches, Cian/Caoimh, Gwydion, Myrddin, or Pan. He seems to represent the "madness" of wild things, the quality that separates man from beast.

Today's issue revisits a character I discussed back in Cían AKA Caoimh/ín's issue, in March: Suibhne. In that issue I speculated that the character of Cían and Suibhne might be continuous, and said I'd return to it on the feast of a suitable Saint Suibhne (June 21st is the feast of "Suibhne the Sage of Armagh").

Well, things are a little clearer, by now. I think I can back up that supposition and claim more confidently that Suibhne indeed is a form of Cían. I'll also be looking at Lailoken, the parallel character in British tradition, and sharing my reasons for seeing these as parallel traditions rather than a case of direct borrowing.

Don't expect great editing for this issue, because I wore myself out on the mess of the prior three issues!

Quick Note on Pronunciation

Looking at the name in modern orthography, "Suibhne", my instinct is to say something that in English orthography would look like "Sweeve'neh". However, given that it was anglicised as "Sweeny" I think it may have been pronounced with a softer aspiration on the "b", coming out closer to "Swee(m?)'neh".

A Man Struck Mad

"Buile Suibne" (Suibhne's Madness/Frenzy) is an Old Irish tale that tells a tragic story of a king named Suibhne, who is supernaturally driven to madness during a battle and loses everything, becoming a bird-like prophetic wild-man who both flees from and craves belonging and intimacy. He finally settles with Saint Moling (AKA Aengus mac Óg), and is later murdered for a perceived wrongdoing with a woman.

It's commonly supposed that Buile Suibne is a derivative work of a British tale about a maddened nobleman, named Lailoken, who is supernaturally driven to madness at a battle and becomes a wildling cryptic-prophet, who is given brief respite from madness by a Saint Kentigern and shortly afterwards is murdered in revenge for angering a woman.

So, we can see the similarities. Indeed, Buile Suibne even has a segment where Suibhne travels to Britain for a while and wanders with a fellow madman, Fer Caille. This ends when Fer Caille dies a death he prophesied for himself, and Suibhne returns to Ireland, lonely. This British madman isn't named similarly to Lailoken or his possible regionalised double, Myrddin (who would later become Merlin in the Arthurian material), but his account of his own madness and his prophesied death do resemble a few details of those characters. So, this part may indeed be a nod to the parallel tradition.

Subtle Commonalities

Besides the gross structure of their stories, the tales of Suibne and Lailoken share some subtler connections, less likely to represent direct borrowings. The most clear parallel in this category, to me, is the structure of their death-scenes.

In the case of Lailoken, he is killed in a triple-death scene while capering away from Kentigern's monastery: first, beaten by men in the employ of a queen he had angered; then falling upon the stake of a fishing trap; thirdly, while impaled thus, drowning in the river.

Outwardly, the death-scene of Suibne is quite different, and more resembles the death scene of Ailill mac Máta - Suibne is in a bush, a woman incites a man with a Fionn-type name (Mongan) to kill him, and the man throws a spear at him, fatally wounding Suibne. A note in the tale acknowledges an alternative tradition where he dies after falling on a stake left there as a trap for him by Mongan.

However, in the details, we find subtler commonality. Both Lailoken and Suibne are killed shortly after being fed a sort of "sacrament" laid in a lowly place. Lailoken is given communion-bread and wine placed consciously by Kentigern upon a rock on the ground rather than given directly. Suibne is given fresh milk (recall Cían's associations with the sacred cow, the Glas Gaibhnenn) from Moling's monastery, poured into a hollowed-out cow-pat upon the ground: it's like both men are given a sacrament that's somehow deliberately profaned by the bestower.

Both men are also killed violently but indirectly by the scheming of a woman angry at them: Lailoken by men in the employ of a Queen whose unfaithfulness he'd revealed; Suibne by a man whose sister had told him Suibne was having sex in the bush with his wife. As I related in Cían/Caoimh's issue, the "nemesis" of this god-type seems to be women angered at his sexual misbehaviour. But he can also be killed, it seems, by women angry at his intervention in their sexual misbehaviour..or who perceive misbehaviour on his part. Of course, maybe in the oral tradition Suibhne was having sex in a bush with Mongan's wife, who knows?

Speaking of that event, for Lailoken; Meldred's queen is angered at him during his temporary imprisonment by Meldred at his court. This imprisonment could be paralleled to the forcible capture and rehabilitation of Suibne by his family, which keeps him stable, for a time, until he once more goes mad at the urging of a supernatural-seeming Cailleach ("Hag"). The motivations for imprisonment differ: Meldred wants prophesy from Lailoken, while Suibhne is captured by his kinsmen out of love. In either case, the character is forcibly rehabilitated, but not for long. Coemgen of Glendalough's rehabilitation appears permanent in his account; Cellach's involvement suggests that it parallels Suibhne's later permanent rehabilitation with Moling, so perhaps we're just missing an arc where he's temporarily rehabilitated only to return to a state of madness.

Sanctuary of the Youths

A more compelling hint of a shared tradition is my belief that Kentigern represents the same god-type as Moling, the Peaceable Divine Twin. A cursory inspection of Kentigern's (tiresomely blathery) life suggests to me that this suspicion is accurate, but I've yet to actually sit with a print-out and a highlighter - perhaps he'll get an issue next January where I'll confirm or deny the allegation properly.

We can also draw Coemgen of Glendalough in here - his rehabilitation is by Dímma, a pet name for Diarmuid (AKA Donn, the ancestor-cum-death-god), but with the involvement of Diarmuid's son Cellach, who thereafter is Coemgen's shadow and ultimate successor.

If this identity of Kentigern with "Peaceable Twins" Moling and Cellach is valid, then a direct borrow including this particular regional adaptation could only make sense if we assume that the author of Buile Suibne knew about the underlying identity of Moling and Kentigern. This is plausible, because Buile Suibne was probably written around the same time as many hagiographies. Even if written later, we could imagine that perhaps Bardic colleges were still maintaining and imparting secrets about the pre-Christian identities of what were now officially Saints.. but we're having to make imaginative assumptions to support this.

To me, it requires fewer assumptions to accept a model where Lailoken and Suibne had parallel oral traditions that predated their respective written biographies. And, that this oral tradition arose from a common origin that predated the drifting of the names for the characters. The drafters of Buile Shuibne then also probably borrowed from the written forms of the Lailoken tale, but the core of the Suibhne's story was still based on native Irish tradition. This process unknowingly captured elements of the original myth that were cognate with Lailoken's, such as the death motivations and scenes, and the god-types of the charitable saints at the end.

A little extra support for the latter model comes from another name of the Mad Sage..

Cían to Suibne, via Comhgán

Alright, that's my direct case for Suibhne and Lailoken being parallel traditions. But there's another example from Irish tradition that can offer a parallel to Buile Suibne, while also offering us a bridge of direct correspondences from Cían to Suibhne.

Circumstantial evidence for Cían=Suibhne is plentiful, and I shared some in the issue for Cían: the isolationist arc that's forcibly ended, the shared association with Peaceable Twins named Moling or Cellach, the appetite for meagre herbal fare, etc. And, the way the life of Coemgen of Glendalough ended with the seemingly non-sequitur comment about Suibhne becoming king just as Coemgen died.. But, a direct line that could connect the two was elusive.

However, looking back at that name-variant from Faelán's issue, Comhgán - at the time I figured that this was a corruption of Coemgen, but I have since come to realise that this name seems to be a more widely used name for the same character. And the best example of this is a colourful step-brother to Cumméne Fada, who is driven mad after a sexual indiscretion with a Druid's wife, and becomes a wandering mad prophet/sage.

Stories of this Comhghán appear in various works, and present him as very close to his brother Cumméne (P.Ó Riain speculates that Cumméne is a localisation of Colm Cille, but I'm suspicious that he's more of a Peaceable Twin). When he is in the mode of a poet-prophet, he has undeniable ability, but when he reverts to foolish madness it is so complete that it confers naturalistic powers upon him; animals become tame for him, he can walk or live underwater, birds shelter him in rainfall, etc.. In this, he resembles Suibhne, who appears to gain the power of flight from his madness, and is even ambiguously described as if he has literally grown feathers. Like Suibhne and Lailoken, this Comhgán also ultimately settles peacefully at the periphery of society - in this case, at a hermitage established with his brother, in whose arms he ultimately dies.

In a parallel to the story of Suibhne, which would seem to support a traditional compatibility for the inclusion of Fer Caille in Suibhne's tale, Comhghán also spends time with another wanderly mad-man (Conall Clogach) before parting ways.

So, if we have a Comhghán who's also serving the role of "Cían" with respect to a Faelán, and we have another Comhghán whose role appears to duplicate Suibne and Lailoken, that provides a strong bridge to infer a relationship:

1. Both Coemgen and Comhghán are fathers to Faelán.
2. Both Coemgen and Suibne have a period of wanderly isolationism, subsisting on herbs and nuts.
3. Both Coemgen and Suibne are forcibly rehabilitated at least once.
4. Both Coemgen and Suibne end up hosted by/with a Peaceable Twin. (And maybe Comhghán..)
5. Both Suibne and Comhghán are driven mad vengefully by a priestly character.
6. Both Suibne and Comhghán spend time with another madman.

Laid out like that, I hope it's clear that this trio have a lot of specific mythemes in common that suggest a two-way identity for each pairing, and therefore tentatively a three-way identity for Caoimh/Cían, Comhghán, and Suibne.

But, Pan Never Goes Crazy..?

Taliesin's Map connects Cian to Greek Pan and Vedic/Hindu Pushan. And, there's a lot to connect Pan to this group of Saints and Madmen - association with sexual inappropriateness, restless or wanderly aspect, identity/association with wild animals, connection to the Peaceable Twin, etc.

But if bouts or arcs of wild madness are a trait of the Celtic types, exemplified by Comhghán, Suibne, and Lailoken/Myrddin Wellt, where is this trait in Pan?

One could imagine this trait being echoed in the way that Pan can inspire Panic - this is probably a symbol of the wild flight of chased prey animals. Pan is also known to be a prophet, because it is Pan who taught this skill to Apollo.

For all this though, Pan himself seems to stay sane..if flighty. You could infer from his relationship to Dionysus) that divine/revelatory madness is somewhere close-by.. but if anyone's the god of revelatory madness in the Greek religion, it seems to be Dionysus himself, not Pan.

So, that could just be regional variation. There's also not much evidence of this trait from Pushan, according to my slim knowledge. However, looking at some of the gods that are considered close to Pan, or possible reflexes of him, it's possible to drawn several bridges between Pan and other characters who do display this trait of divine madness. For example, you can observe how Aristeus and Marsyas are viewed as being closely related to Pan and also viewed as related to Silenus - an animal-featured character also found in the retinue of Dionysus.

So, while nobody's directly saying that Pan is Silenus, the two are both equated to a shared couplet of other gods - one of whom, Aristeus, looks essentially like a regional form of Pan who got internally co-opted as a lesser god as the regionalised forms of the Greek Religion self-syncretised into a multi-state religion.

Silenus may capture the essence of the divine madman archetype - he's not directly said to be Pan, though he is said to be the same as Roman "Silvanus" who appears in his turn to be a form of the same God-type. He is also, variously, the son of Pan or a brother of Pan's, in addition to a few other alternate parentages. Silenus is represented as permanently intoxicated (in Greek theology, this often represents Divine Madness), and had the power of prophesy and foresight arising from this state. Silenus also wanders and gets lost: Midas finding Silenus is what earns him the boon of his "Golden Touch" from Dionysus. You might say that Midas had "forcibly rehabilitated" him?

The Sons of the Young Sons..

In the Irish tradition, Cían is generally son of Cáinte/Dian Cécht, and there are some traditions I've discussed before that suggest that he may esoterically be seen to descend directly from the Cosmic Person (and therefore can appear to descend from any of the "core" Gods in some variants). This gels well with the cryptically cosmic or "autocthonian" traditions around Pan.

However, Pan (and many of his duplicates such as Silenus) is generally accepted to be a son of Hermes, the Peaceable Twin type. This is interesting in light of the Celtic parallels, who seem to be very close to Young Son/Peaceable Twin gods and may generally go to "retire" with them, but are rarely seeming to be younger than them or descended from them. It's also interesting in light of the dynamic of Gwydion and Pryderi, where there is no love lost between them and Gwydion ultimately kills Pryderi after a bloody war.

Coming back to Greece though, the dynamics of Pan's parentage offer a curious support to my contention that Odysseus is an incarnation of Hermes. Pan has various attested mothers. One is named Penelopeia, a rustic nymph (minor god). In some traditions, Pan's mother is instead Odysseus' wife Penelope: in these traditions the parent is still usually Hermes. But there are versions of this myth where the father is Odysseus himself.

Other mothers to Pan seem plausibly to fit the same archetype as the one I suppose for Penelope herself; the prophetic war-and-weaving goddess, Athena. Penelope of course is associated with weaving, Penelopeia with sheep and perhaps shearing - leading to Weaving, I suppose. But other mothers, such as Thymbris & Sose, are given as Prophetic nymphs. Prophesy and Fibrecraft are also traits that seem to attach to the Mórrígan, as I discussed in the issue for St. Íta.

Yet, again, we don't necessarily see much evidence for a Mórrígan mother for the Irish Suibhne, Cían, Coemgen, or Comhghán.. rather, we see dynamics of a possible incestuous desire between the Wild Marches god and his Sister, hints that even extend to St.Íta's vita. The same incestuous sibling dynamic is speculated for Gwydion and Arianrhod, and appears to have been a feature of the Vedic Pushan also.

Any Norse Parallel?

Taliesin's Map proposes that Óðinn contains/comprises the Norse Cían/Pan/Pushan, along with a bunch of other Fionn-adjacent gods. In any case, Óðinn is already well understood to be an ecstatic, facultative madman, and is also known to wander a lot. So, that might contain a bit of today's god-archetype. Oddly, the "carriage pulled by goats" thing fell to Thor..

So, is Gwydion Crazy or Not?

Final note: Merlin, originally Myrddin, lines up well enough with Gwydion. He "participates" in the conception of the saviour-king (Arthur), he mentors/teaches him, and he has gifts of illusion and prophesy, he's a bit of a sex-pest and he's ultimately undone by a woman he was harassing.

We do have some material that links Myrddin directly to a period or a tendency to madness. One that particularly interests me is the Arthurian poem "The Dialogue Between Arthur, King of the Bretons, and Guynglaff", in which a wild man and Druid is captured by Arthur's men and gives prophesies of the future. The Wild man's name is Guynglaff, AKA Kian - strikingly paralleling Cían.

For Myrddin himself we have the Vita Merlini, which presents a series of events very similar to Lailoken's; a tragic battle, madness, re-capture, riddling truth-saying about an unfaithful woman, and a triple death (not his own). In Lailoken's appearances, one source explicitly says that Lailoken was said to be the same as Myrddin.

So, if "Merlin" is Myrddin is Lailoken is Gwydion..does Gwydion go "mad and wild"? Not exactly..Maybe we lost the myths for this. Or.. could it be that Gwydion's punishment for raping Math's servant (that is, being transformed into various wild animals for years at a time) might be the Welsh form of this myth?

And..Pushan?

If Pan and Pushan are cognates, as many believe, then can we see a "madness" in Pushan? I'm not knowledgeable enough on the Vedic material to say, really. But, Pushan is given a particular title normally reserved for characters with a prophetic level of poetic ability: Kavi. Perhaps a more experienced eye could identify cognate deities or alter-egoes of Pushan's, like those of Pan and Silenus, that carry the trait of "wanderly wildling madman"?

Other Associates

Suibhnes, whether as saints or as kings or men, tend to run in certain circles. It should be clear that the Peaceable Twin is a regular companion, but a "Muiredach" (a Warrior-twin name?) also features in Buile Suibne. King-archetypes like Guaire and Colmán also generally figure: various reflexes of Colm such as Colm Cille, Cainneach etc., are frequently found close in the lines of succession to Suibhnes. Sometimes, as in the case of Suibhne of Buile Suibne, Colmán-types are their fathers. And of course, Crónáns are often found, being the saintly forms of Dian Cécht, Cían's father.

There's also a tendency for Diarmuids or Duibnes to appear - they might, in this case, be merely another king-archetype, or they might instead be appearing as a reflex of the Moon-God. But, despite the proximity of Dionysus and Silenus, there's not a very strong tendency to see Suibhnes or even Caoimhs hanging out with the Moon-God Midir/Bréanainn/Baoithín. The only curious hint, to me, is that the man Bréanainn meets, when he finally arrives at the happy afterlife, is feathered. Probably, this is nothing to do with Suibhne; his character appears nothing like him other than this one detail...though in the Vita Merlini, arising out of Welsh Arthurian tradition, Barinthus is also the boatman who brings Arthur to the afterlife Island of Apples for his recovery, and Merlin goes to the same place in his adventures. So, the Mad-Prophet-Sage does seem to visit the same locale, at least in the life of Myrddin/Merlin. Maybe it was indeed Suibhne that Bréanainn meets, somehow?

Most interesting, to me, is the still-mysterious association with a particular subset of characters. Ronán came up in the issue for Cían, where I speculated at a relationship to the seal-children of Cían - I have no further insight since then. But curiously, there's an even more specific-to-Suibhne character, named "Sléibhín", who turns up alongside a bunch of Suibhnes in stories and annalistic appearances. The name suggests some association with mountains, and in some appearances they are antagonistic towards one another. But, their appearances are too fragmentary for me to make sense of (yet).

Wrap-Up

To the names from Cían/Caoimh's issue, we can add Comhghán, Comhdhán. It seems uncertain to me whether this is indeed related to the modern name "Coman" or "Comán", but some sources suggest that it is.

If we're covering Pan again, then we have to include music of the panpipes and other "rustic" instruments, as well as Echoes. These don't figure in the Celtic legends as far as I'm aware, but the association of the god with the margins of society and nature, and with roads and byways, and with herding and herb-ing, make it apt.

Bibliography

• O hOgáin, Dáithí (2006), "The Lore of Ireland", entry for "Comhghán"
• Ó Riain, Pádraig (2011), "A Dictionary of Irish Saints", Dublin: Four Courts Press.
• Ó Keeffe, James.G (1904), translation of Buile Suibne, available on UCC Celt

Coming Up

• 6th July: Eithne, Goddess of Wisdom and Deep Waters, Mother of Heroes, Cosmic Dreamer.
• 24th July: Déclán: (One) Saintly form of An Dagda, the cosmic wind who reveals land from the ocean, kindler and supporter of Lugaid.

(I'm still debating whether to do a Lughnasa issue on Patrick-as-Lugh, or to try and tackle one of the several Goddess-Saints of Lughnasa..feedback welcome)

Patterns in Celtic Mythology #16: Name Re-Use

It's been a while since I had the leftover word-count for a Patterns section. Let me quickly talk about something that's becoming clearer and clearer to me.

I've mused before about the question: did the indigenous Irish religion, by the time Christianity came around, "know" that they were dealing with re-incarnating gods? Looking at the mythological and the hagiographical traditions of Ireland, I can see how many of the characters seem to appear at various temporal layers of the material, and bearing the same myth-types and personalities. It's fairly clear to me, by now, that the likes of Fergus (credit: Taliesin's Map) Declan (credit: Oudaer & Lajoye) and Dubthach are "incarnations" of An Dagda. But did the indigenous Irish know? Did the Christians know?

The more I dig into the material, the clearer it becomes that they did. As covered in the issue for Conall, the descent of various Kings and Saints seems to follow a pattern where they'll be traced to a particular child of a particular "keystone" king, where that child's name will often correspond to the nature of the character in question.

But the more glaring piece of evidence concerns name re-use. When various characters of the same era or generation have the same name and nature, you can argue that they're localisations of the same original character. But when these characters appear in very different time-periods, yet have the same natures, it becomes clearer that they were understood to be the same.

This is obfuscated when there are various names for the same God. Until you know the names belong to the same person, the name re-use isn't easily discernable. So, Fionn, Fintan, Finnian, Fiachra, Mongán, Conall, Corc.. some of these names are not at all like the others. Likewise for Dagda, Fergus, Dubhthach, Declan, or for Cían, Coemgen, Caoimh, Comhghán (well, these latter are a bit alike..). But once you can identify these patterns, the re-use stands out.

This possibly means that to the Irish, the incarnation and re-incarnation of gods was rendered even more explicitly than in the Vedic and Hindu traditions. Which is interesting, considering how obfuscated it now appears (at first) in the hagiography.

As we've seen in today's issue, concerning the Greek traditions, it's likely that at one time the Greek religion also had an understanding that the gods incarnated at times as mortal men, such as Hermes and Odysseus, or Zeus and Perseus.