Salmon of Knowledge
creature/character in Irish mythology
The Salmon of Knowledge (Irish: An Bradán Feasa) is a creature in the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology, sometimes identified with the mythical seer Fintan mac Bóchra who was known as "The Wise" and was once transformed into a salmon.
Fenian Cycle
The Salmon story figures prominently in The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn, which recounts the early adventures of Fionn mac Cumhaill. In the story, an ordinary salmon ate nine hazelnuts that fell into the Well of Wisdom (an Tobar Segais) from nine hazel trees that surrounded the well. By this act, the salmon gained all the world's knowledge. The first person to eat of its flesh would in turn gain this knowledge.
The poet Finn Eces (or Finegas) spent seven years fishing for this salmon. Finally Finn caught the salmon and gave the fish to Fionn, his servant and son of Cumhall, with instructions to cook it but on no account eat any of it. Fionn cooked the salmon, turning it over and over, but when he touched the fish with his thumb to see if it was cooked, he burnt his finger on a drop of hot cooking fish fat. Fionn sucked on his burned finger to ease the pain. Little did Fionn know that all the salmon's wisdom had been concentrated into that one drop of fat.
“Salmon of Knowledge” enters the record as creature/character in Irish mythology. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Salmon, Knowledge and creature can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Salmon of Knowledge” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.