She must leave her master, though the master barred her every escape. She must learn to control her passion and her vulnerability. She tossed and turned, and sighed. Putting one responsibility against another, she was saddened by the fact that such knowledge meant the end of friendship. They were then on the side of a highland in Knockbride. She made her decision. The sun was rolling across Meath county when Fionn turned into a bird, flew straight up, and braked a minute overhead. Aengus rose to his feet. The walls of his stomach shook like the walls of a tent in a high wind. Then, with a neat jig of its arched shoulders, the swift fell into a low skim and went out of sight.

Aengus, greatly troubled, searched the sky for the place where the black-nosed swift, a moment before, had been.

“Take her away,” said Jonathan when he saw the nurse at the end of his bed.

It can happen anywhere, so Aengus tried to explain. But no one would believe him. Ever since he’d returned alone, the people believed he’d killed his servant Fionn. In trying to tell the truth Aengus aged considerably.

Every man he met he told his story to, over and over, and it benefited him nothing. Who wants to hear one man’s side of the story? What enlightenment is there in that? So, Aengus, perplexed and giddy, returned to the banks of the Boyne and counted the sun-shadows and noted the odour of his stools. It was here that he heard another version of the Salmon of Knowledge. A stranger came. He was from Dromohair. Aengus, glad of a listener, immediately began to tell his tale, how he had caught a fish after five years fishing the shadows, cooked him and then his manservant had stolen the knowledge. The cur, the Leitrim man said with a generous curse, may lightning strike the high hole of his arse! Amen, said Aengus. And worse still, the man Fionn had turned into a girl so that he fell in love with her, not knowing if he loved her because she was a woman, or because she possessed the knowledge he craved. And worst of all, before he could assimilate all this knowledge, the girl had gone and turned into a bird.

Now, here I lie, said Aengus, heartbroken.

It all depends, said the Leitrim man, whether the salmon is coming or going. He pondered the waters. You might well have encountered the dying salmon. The stranger considered the woe of that concept. He continued: To the man who interrupts the passage of the dying salmon, the knowledge will be of a sad variety. It explains the curse of what can never be attained.

Aengus clicked his tongue.

If you chance to encounter the dying salmon nothing further can be added to your learning, the sage from Leitrim continued. You will have arrived without journeying.

Poor Fionn, said Aengus, relieved.