The Salmon of Knowledge

An ancient salmon drawn in fine glowing green lines, its eye a single point of vermilion.

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Seen from above at night, a woodland pool glows beneath its surface, ringed by dark trees in the falling rain.

The Well

Before the world was as it is, there was a deep well of water.

The Well of Segais was hidden away near Carbury in County Kildare, where the rivers of Ireland were said to rise. The river Boyne came out of it first. Around the well grew nine hazel trees, and every autumn their nuts dropped into the water. Inside every nut was a share of all that was ever known.

Underwater in the dark, a great salmon drawn in fine green lines swims among drifting hazelnuts, framed by hazel leaves.

The First Man

He had been alive since before the flood.

Fintan mac Bóchra came to Ireland with the first people ever to set foot on the island. After the great flood rose, Fintan was the only one to live. He survived by changing his shape first into an eagle, then a hawk, and in the end a salmon. Up to the well he swam, and there he ate nine nuts, one from every tree. With the ninth, he had the knowledge of the world inside him, and away down the Boyne he went.

On a mossy riverbank beneath tall rounded trees, an old man in a brown coat fishes the dark river with a long, bending rod.

The Poet

It was said that anyone who ate this salmon would gain all the wisdom of the world.

Finegas, a druid-poet, had given his life to that prophecy. He built a house on the bank of the Boyne and fished every morning. A boy named Fionn came to study with him, hiding from the men who had killed his father.