At Swim-two-birds by Flann O’Brien

the black fall of a night to Ros Bearaigh and lodged himself in a hunched huddle in the middle of the yew-tree of the church in that place. But being besieged with nets and hog-harried by the caretaker of the church and his false wife, he hurried nimbly to the old tree at Ros Eareain where he remained hidden and unnoticed the length of a full fortnight, till the time when Linchehaun came and perceived the murk of his shadow in the sparse branches and saw the other branches he had broken and bent in his movements and in changing trees. And the two of them parleyed together until they had said between them these fine words following.
    Sad it is Sweeny, said Linchehaun, that your last extremity should be thus, without food or drink or raiment like a fowl, the same man that had cloth of silk and of satin and the foreign steed of the peerless bridle, also comely generous women and boys and hounds and princely people of every refinement; hosts and tenants and men-at-arms, and mugs and goblets and embellished buffalo-hornsfor the savouring of pleasant-tasted fine liquors. Sad it is to see the same man as a hapless air-fowl.
    Cease now, Linchehaun, said Sweeny, and give me tidings.
    Your father is dead, said Linchehaun.
    That has seized me with a blind agony, said Sweeny.
    Your mother is likewise dead.
    Now all the pity in me is at an end.
    Dead is your brother.
    Gaping open is my side on account of that
    She has died too your sister.
    A needle for the heart is an only sister.
    Ah, dumb dead is the little son that called you pop.
    Truly, said Sweeny, that is the last blow that brings a man to the ground.
    When Sweeny heard the sorry word of his small son still and without life, he fell with a crap from the middle of the yew to the ground and Linchehaun hastened to his thorn-packed flank with fetters and handcuffs and manacles and locks and black-iron chains and he did not achieve a resting until the lot were about the madman, and through him and above him and over him, roundwise and about Thereafter there was a concourse of hospitallers and knights and warriors around the trunk of the yew, and after melodious talk they entrusted the mad one to the care of Linchehaun till he would take him away to a quiet place for a fortnight and a month, to the quiet of a certain room where his senses returned to him, the one after the other, with no one near him but the old mill-hag.
    O hag, said Sweeny, searing are the tribulations I have suffered; many a terrible leap have I leaped from hill to hill, from fort to fort from land to land, from valley to valley.
    For the sake of God, said the hag, leap for us now a leap such as you leaped in the days of your madness.
    And thereupon Sweeny gave a bound over the top of the bedrail till he reached the extremity of the bench.
    My conscience indeed, said the hag, I could leap the same leap myself.
    And the hag gave a like jump.
    Sweeny then gathered himself together in the extremity of his jealousy and threw a leap right out through the skylight of the hostel.
    I could vault that vault too, said the hag and straightway she vaulted the same vault. And the short of it is this, that Sweeny travelled the length of five cantreds of leaps until he had penetrated to Glenn na nEachtach in Fiodh Gaibhle with the hag at her hag’s leaps behind him; and when Sweeny rested there in a huddle at the top of a tall ivy-branch, the hag was perched there on another tree beside him. He heard there the voice of a stag and he thereupon made a lay eulogizing aloud the trees and the stags of Erin, and he did not cease or sleep until he had achieved these staves.
    Bleating one, little antlers,
O lamenter we like
delightful the clamouring
from your glen you make.
    O leafy-oak, clumpy-leaved,
you are high above trees,
O hazlet, little clumpy-branch –
the nut-smell of hazels.
    O alder, O alder-friend,
delightful your colour,
you don’t prickle me or tear
in the place you are.
    O blackthorn, little thorny-one,
O little