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"It is The Salmon," said Finegas with a great sigh. Fionn leaped for delight. "I am glad for you, master," he cried. "Indeed I am glad for you." "And I am glad, my dear soul," the master rejoined. But, having said it, he bent his brow to his hand and for a long time he was silent and gathered into himself. "What should be done now?" Fionn demanded, as he stared on the beautiful fish.
"What should there be after that?" the poet retorted. "I mean, what would you do with All Knowledge?" "A weighty question," said Finegas smilingly. "I could answer it if I had All Knowledge, but not until then. What would you do, my dear?" "I would make a poem," Fionn cried. "I think too," said the poet, "that that is what would be done."
And when he had asked his question, and given his own answer to it, Finegas would take the matter up and make clear to him where the query was badly formed or at what point the answer had begun to go astray, so that Fionn came to understand by what successions a good question grows at last to a good answer.
He gazed on the fish with more than his eyes. He looked on it with his heart, with his soul in his eyes, and when he turned to look on Fionn the boy did not know whether the love that was in his eyes was for the fish or for himself. Yet he did know that a great moment had arrived for the poet. "So," said Finegas, "you did not eat it on me after all?" "Did I not promise?" Fionn replied.
"You may catch the salmon while I am with you," the hopeful boy mused. "Would not that be a great happening!" and he stared in ecstasy across the grass at those visions which a boy's mind knows. "Let us pray for that," said Finegas fervently. "Here is a question," Fionn continued. "How does this salmon get wisdom into his flesh?" "There is a hazel bush overhanging a secret pool in a secret place.
"Would you have got as good poems by the Shannon or the Suir or by sweet Ana Life'?" "They are good rivers," was the answer. "They all belong to good gods." "But why did you choose this river out of all the rivers?" Finegas beamed on his pupil. "I would tell you anything," said he, "and I will tell you that."
But he could not often make these sleepy sallies; his master was too experienced a teacher to allow any such bright-faced, eager-eyed abstractions, and as the druid women had switched his legs around a tree, so Finegas chased his mind, demanding sense in his questions and understanding in his replies.
Fionn went on his travels again. All desires save one are fleeting, but that one lasts for ever. Fionn, with all desires, had the lasting one, for he would go anywhere and forsake anything for wisdom; and it was in search of this that he went to the place where Finegas lived on a bank of the Boyne Water. But for dread of the clann-Morna he did not go as Fionn.
Finegas rose from where he sat by the osier basket. "I will be back in a short time," he said heavily. "While I am away you may roast the salmon, so that it will be ready against my return." "I will roast it indeed," said Fionn. The poet gazed long and earnestly on him. "You will not eat any of my salmon while I am away?" he asked. "I will not eat the littlest piece," said Fionn.
But in his thousand thoughts he yet remembered the Salmon of Knowledge as eagerly as his master did. He already venerated Finegas for his great learning, his poetic skill, for an hundred reasons; but, looking on him as the ordained eater of the Salmon of Knowledge, he venerated him to the edge of measure.
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