[1] The Annals of Tigernach state Suibhne, son of Colmán, died in the Battle of Mag Rath, making Buile seem a fanciful imagining of a dead warrior.
James G. O’Keeffe has hypothesized a possible scenario where Suibhne might have been elected by the Cruithin to act as regent in the midst of King Congal's exile.
The text can be dated to broadly from 1200 to 1500 on linguistic grounds, but John O'Donovan asserted the writer must have lived before 1197 when the last chieftain of Tir Connail died who was descended from Domnall mac Áedo, since the work is intended to flatter this monarchic dynasty.
[4] In the legend, while Saint Rónán Finn was marking boundaries for a new church, the sound of his bell reached Suibhne's ear.
His wife Eorann tried to detain him by grabbing his cloak, which unraveled, leaving Suibhne to exit the house stark naked.
In the ongoing war, St. Ronan had mediated a truce to last from each evening until morning, but Suibhne habitually broke this by killing during the hours when combat was not permitted.
Suibhne too received the sprinkling of holy water, but taking this as a taunt, he killed one of the bishop's psalmists with a spear, and cast another at Ronan himself.
At this, Ronan repeated the same curse: that Suibhne will wander like a bird, much as the spear-shaft, perch on tree branches at the sound of the bell, and die by the spear just as he had killed the monk.
[7]) The deranged Suibhne then left the battlefield behind, reaching a forest called Ros Bearaigh, in Glenn Earcain[b] and perched on a yew tree.
Loingsechan brought Suibhne back to normal life and restored his sanity, but while recuperating, the mill hag taunted him into a contest of leaping.
[20] As Suibhne attended Moling's vespers, the priest instructed a parish woman employed as his cook to provide the madman with a meal (collation), in the form of daily milk.
However, her husband (Moling's herder) believed malicious hearsay about the two having a tryst, and in a fit of jealousy, thrust a spear into Suibhne while he was drinking from the hole.
At every stop in his flight, Suibhne pauses to give a poem on the location and his plight, and his descriptions of the countryside and nature, as well as his pathos, are central to the development of the text.
The author Flann O'Brien incorporated much of the story of Buile Shuibhne into his comic novel At Swim-Two-Birds, whose title is the English translation of the place name 'Snámh dá én' in the tale.
[27] In the TV adaptation, Ibis, saying that "stories are truer than the truth," suggests that Sweeney is also Lugh, the Irish multi-skilled god of lightning, crafts and culture.
Although, he begrudgingly remembers episodes of Lugh's life such as the slaying of One-Eyed Balor of the Fomorians[28] A contemporary version of the legend by poet Patricia Monaghan explores Sweeney as an archetype of the warrior suffering from "Soldier's Heart".
"[31] The play charts the trials and tribulations of Lil Sweeney's life in the Maria Goretti flats as she deals with crime, poverty, unemployment, drug abuse, and tries to come to terms with the premature death of her daughter Chrisse, a heroin addict who died a year before the action starts from an AIDS related illness.
In the 1999 young adult fantasy novel The Stones Are Hatching by Geraldine McCaughrean, Mad Sweeney is portrayed as having been traumatised by his experience fighting in the Napoleonic Wars.