The writings on the panels of the Mad Sweeney Mosaic,
Irish Life Mall, Abbey Street Lower

1. "He shall roam Ireland mad and bare
and find death on the end of a spear"

2. "His brain convulsed, his mind split open
He levitated in a frantic cumbersome motion
Like a bird of the air"

3."The life God grants me
now is bare and strait
I am haggard
womanless|
Cut off from music"

4. "I dare not bat an eyelid
The flight of a small wren scare me"

5. "Glen Bolcain is a natural asylum
where all the madmen of Ireland used to assemble
once their year in madness was complete
Cold springs and clear sandy streams
Where green-topped watercress and
languid brook live
philander over the surface
It is natures pantry with its sorrels
Its berries its wild garlic
its black sloes and its wild acorns"

6, "I have lived among trees between flood and
ebb tide with no pillow for my head"

7. "Welcome here my crazy dote
my first and last and favourite
I wish we could fly away together
Be rolling stones
Birds of a feather
I'd swoop to pleasure
You in flight
And huddle close
On the roost at night"

8. "remember when you played the promise-game
If you ever lost your Sweeney"

9. "The soul roosts in the tree of love
His body sinks in its clay nest"

10. "The Story of Mad Sweeney
The King who was cursed by
Saint Ronan, begins 7th century
Ulster at the Battle of Magh Rath
Sweeney was transformed
into a flying panic stricken outcast
Doomed to roam the length and breadth of Ireland
Until he would die of a
spear wound at Saint Molings monastery in Leinster
In the meantime haunted by
memories of his former
life and loves, exposed to
all weathers .. constantly
lamenting his fate he went
astray in the woods and
on the mounatins. The poems
he uttered in his misery
are preserved in Buile Suibhne
one of the greatest works of
literature in the Irish language"