The Poet Who Waited for the Salmon
Finnéces was a poet who spent seven years on the bank of the River Boyne trying to catch the Salmon of Knowledge — the fish that had absorbed all the wisdom in the world by eating hazelnuts falling from the nine sacred hazels into the Well of Segais.
A prophecy told him that a man named Fionn would eat the salmon and receive all its wisdom. He understood the prophecy. He spent seven years waiting.
When the young Deimne came to study under him — a boy not yet called Fionn — Finnéces didn’t recognise the prophecy’s subject. He was looking for a man named Fionn. The boy was called Deimne.
The salmon was finally caught. Finnéces set Deimne to cook it with strict orders not to eat any. A blister rose on the fish’s skin as it cooked. The boy pressed it with his thumb and put the thumb in his mouth to cool the burn. When Finnéces came back and looked at the boy, something had changed in his eyes. He asked whether the boy had eaten the fish. Deimne said no — only touched the blister. Finnéces asked if he had any other name. People sometimes called him Fionn, the boy said. The fair one. For his white hair.
Finnéces understood. He told the boy to eat the rest of the fish. It was his by destiny. Finnéces would receive no more wisdom from it.
He didn’t rage or argue. Seven years of waiting, surrendered without bitterness to a child who had blundered into the wisdom he had spent his life pursuing. He gave the boy the fish, named him for the prophecy, and let him go.
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