Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the Salmon of Knowledge

At a Glance

• Central figures: Fionn mac Cumhaill (later captain of the fianna), the poet Finnegas, and the Salmon of Knowledge that fed on the hazelnuts of wisdom at the Well of Segais.
• Setting: The banks of the River Boyne in Ireland, where Finnegas had kept his watch for seven years.
• The turn: Finnegas catches the salmon at last and gives the boy Demne the task of cooking it, commanding him not to eat any of it.
• The outcome: Demne burns his thumb on the salmon’s skin, puts it to his mouth, and receives all the world’s knowledge; Finnegas, seeing the change in the boy’s eyes, gives him the whole fish and names him Fionn.
• The legacy: Fionn’s gift of knowledge remained with him for life - whenever he put his thumb to his teeth, he could see what was hidden and know what was coming.

The boy had been called Demne all his life, and before that he had been called nothing, because his mother hid him in the forests of Slieve Bloom to keep him alive. His father Cumhall was dead - killed by Goll mac Morna at the battle of Cnucha before the boy was born. The son of a dead man and a hunted woman does not grow up soft. By the time Demne walked south along the Boyne he was lean and quick and already dangerous, though he did not yet know who he was or what he would become.

He was looking for a teacher. What he found was smoke rising from a bend in the river, and a thin old man sitting beside a pool.

Finnegas at the Pool

The old man’s name was Finnegas, and he was a fili - a poet of the highest rank, a man who had given his life to the pursuit of a single thing. For seven years he had camped beside the Pool of Fec on the Boyne, because the prophecy said this: whoever ate the Salmon of Knowledge would possess all the wisdom in the world, and the salmon lived in this pool. It had grown fat on the nine hazelnuts that fell from the trees surrounding the Well of Segais, and each nut it swallowed gave it another portion of everything that could be known. Finnegas had been promised by his own teacher that a man named Fionn would one day eat the fish. His own name was Fionn Éces. He assumed the prophecy meant him.

So he fished. Season after season. He saw the salmon sometimes - a shape beneath the surface, copper-dark, larger than any fish had a right to be. It would not take the hook. It would not come to the net. Seven years Finnegas sat there, and he had become strange with waiting. His clothes were old. His fire was small. His eyes had the look of a man watching something that was always about to happen.

Demne came out of the trees and stood at the edge of the camp, and Finnegas looked up and saw a boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen, fair-haired, with hands already calloused from javelin and sling.

Who are you?

Demne, the boy said.

Finnegas took him on. A poet needs someone to gather firewood and carry water, and the boy was willing. Demne did not ask about the fishing. He cooked what Finnegas caught in the river - trout, mostly - and kept the fire going, and listened when the old man spoke. Finnegas did not speak often. Mostly he watched the pool.

The Catch

Then one morning, on a day no different from any other, the salmon took the hook.

Finnegas fought it for half the day. The line cut his hands. The rod bent nearly double and he braced his feet in the mud of the bank and held on. The salmon ran and turned and ran again, and the water of the pool churned white. Demne stood behind the old man and watched and did not move to help, because Finnegas had not asked.

When Finnegas finally dragged the fish onto the bank it lay in the grass, enormous, its scales the color of old bronze. Its eye was open and bright and looked at nothing and everything. Finnegas knelt over it and his hands were shaking.

He built up the fire himself. He spitted the salmon and set it over the coals. Then he turned to the boy.

Watch it, he said. Turn it. Do not let the skin break. And Demne - do not eat any of it. Not a flake. Not a drop of the fat. Do you hear me?

Demne nodded.

Finnegas went to wash his hands in the river. He had waited seven years. He could wait a little longer.

The Thumb

The boy turned the spit. The fire was good and the salmon cooked slowly, its skin tightening, the fat beginning to spit and hiss against the coals. A blister rose on the salmon’s flank - a small swelling of heat beneath the bronze skin. Demne reached out and pressed it down with his thumb.

The blister burst. The juice was scalding. The boy jerked his hand back and did what any child does with a burn - he shoved his thumb into his mouth.

That was all.

He stood very still. The world had changed, or his eyes had changed, or both. He could feel the knowledge moving through him the way water moves through sand - not arriving all at once but seeping, filling, settling into places he had not known were empty. He knew the names of the stars and the names of the rivers and where they went. He knew the languages of birds. He knew what had happened and what had not happened yet. He knew his father’s name and how his father had died and who had killed him.

Finnegas came back from the river and looked at the boy’s face and understood.

Did you eat any of the salmon?

I did not, Demne said. But I burned my thumb on it, and I put my thumb in my mouth.

The old poet sat down slowly. Seven years. The prophecy had said a man named Fionn. He looked at the fair-haired boy standing in the smoke.

What is your name?

Demne.

No, said Finnegas. Your name is Fionn.

He gave the boy the whole salmon. There was no use in it now - the first taste had carried the knowledge, and the rest was only fish. Demne - Fionn - ate it because Finnegas told him to, sitting by the fire while the old man watched the river and said nothing for a long time.

After the Boyne

Fionn left the Boyne and went south, and then north, and then everywhere. The knowledge stayed. For the rest of his life, whenever he needed to see what was hidden or know what was coming, he put his thumb to his teeth and the sight came. He became captain of the fianna, the war-bands that served the High King, and he led them for years beyond counting. But the knowledge was always the foundation - not his spear-arm, not his speed, but what the salmon had given a boy who had not even been trying to take it.

Finnegas stayed by the pool. The hazelnuts still fell into the Well of Segais somewhere upstream, but no second salmon came. The poet had his art, and his art had always been enough. It was only the one thing he had wanted that he did not get.

The pool on the Boyne is still there. The hazel trees still grow.