Sweeney astray Book

Sweeney Astray is a translation by Seamus Heaney of a medieval Irish work Buile Suibhne that has all the hallmarks of Heaney's poetics. A long poem about Sweeney, King of the Ulsters who is cursed by the powerful cleric, Ronan, after he is wronged and almost killed by the king.

Consumed by fear thanks to the curse:
His brain convulsed,
his mind split open.
Vertigo, hysteria, lurchings
and launchings came over him,
he staggered and flapped desperately,
he was revolted by the thought of known places
and dreamed strange migrations.
…

The 'strange migrations' come to pass, as Sweeney travels naked through the land, afraid of capture and surviving on watercress. Mixing brief snippets of narrative that propel the story forward, along with longer pieces of poetry, mostly compositions by Sweeney in lamentation of one thing or another, his unusual adventure of flight progresses:

To-night the snow is cold
I was at the end of my tether
but hunger and bother
are endless.

Look at me, broken
and down-at-heel,
Sweeny from Rasharkin.
Look at me now

always shifting,
making fresh pads,
and always at night.
At times I am afraid.

In the grip of dread
I would launch and sail
beyond the known seas.
I am the madman of Glen Bolcain,

wind-scourged, stripped
like a winter tree
clad in black frost
and frozen snow.
…

Eventually, Sweeney runs into his wife, who has now taken a place with one of two rightful successors and Sweeney recalls: "Do you remember, lady, the great love we shared when we were together? Life is still a pleasure to you but not to me." And a humorous and beautiful exchange takes place between them where the dialogue is in poetic format. After their exchange, Sweeney is chased by Lynchseachan who eventually convinces him to return to his home at Dal-Arie, until Sweeney realizes he is being made a fool of and escapes. Suffice to say, he eventually runs into a fellow madman who asks Muirghil to give Sweeney milk each night, but due to a row between Muirghil and another woman, the other woman convinces Muirghil's husband that Muirghil is with another man (Sweeney). The jealousy plays out to a tragic consequence for Sweeney:

Of all innocent lairs I made
the length and breadth of Ireland
I remember an open bed
above the lough in Mourne.

Of all innocent lairs I made
the length and breadth of Ireland
I remember bedding down
Above the wood in Glen Bolcain.

To you, Christ, I give thanks
for your Body in communion.
Whatever evil I have done
in this world, I repent.

What I particularly enjoyed is the conversion I experienced from being appalled by Sweeney's irrational and unjustified actions at the start towards the Cleric, to being sympathetic to this madman's curse and plight at all that he had lost. I suppose the moral is to act justly or suffer the consequence. Yet, by stripping him of everything worldly, tangible and intangible, did he then not become closer to god than the Cleric? In his suffering and transformation from lamentations to, eventually, some praises, did he not become humble and pious?