Excerpt from Celtic Spirit

The Well of Segais and The Salmon

Celtic wisdom, the salmon of wisdom, and the sacredness attributed to wells are often mentioned in Celtic lore and my blogs. Here is an excerpt from Celtic Spirit about the mythical  Well of Segais where The Tale of the Salmon of Wisdom is said to take place. The two teenagers discovered it was somewhere in the Boyne Valley and now share the story. Trish, Megan’s mother, is the narrator:

Dorrie continues. “As you may have noticed, our own Megan and Jackson have been exploring Druid tradition in cards and books and sticks. We have asked them tonight to tell the story of The Well of Segais. Are you ready?” 

Everyone is pretty surprised to see Jackson drag himself up to join my enthusiastic daughter, myself included. Leave it to her to get him moving. “Aye, we are”, Megan says in her best imitation of an Irish brogue, which, thankfully, she does not try to use further. 

“As we all are discovering, most Irish stories have a number of versions. The story of the Well of Segais that we will tell tonight is about the time when Finn MacCool—that’s the English version of his name, I can’t pronounce the Gaelic one—was a boy and how he came to have the wisdom of the salmon.” 

Jackson takes it from there. “You see, there were nine hazelnut trees growing around the sacred pool of water created by the well. Nine is a magic number and hazel wood is the ninth tree of the ogham. These were the trees of wisdom. They say the purplish nuts dropped into the pool and the shells came off, leaving ‘kernels of wisdom’ for the salmon to eat.

 “Some say there was also a beautiful fountain created by the well as the water surfaced. As the nuts dropped into the pool, the salmon ate the nuts and grew wiser and wiser. Now the salmon is the oldest of animals so they have accumulated the most wisdom. “One day, a boy seeking to learn poetry finds a giant who is also a poet by the banks of the Boyne. The giant had been seeking the salmon for seven years. Now he has found and caught it and is going to cook it. He allows the boy to stir the cauldron but makes the boy promise not to touch or eat the flesh of the salmon. It is for the giant only to eat.

 “But while stirring the pot, the juice of the salmon splashes out onto the boy. The boy licks his thumb to soothe the burning feeling. As he does so, he unintentionally breaks the rule. And, by tasting the salmon, he is the one who gets the wisdom. The giant is really mad. But he is also smart. He accepts that it was meant to be. He names the boy Finn, meaning the Fair One. And so it was that from that day forward, Finn could put his thumb in his mouth and foresee the future.” 

Megan takes the final line. “The rest is a story for another day, as they say.” 

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