So it was to be. The river became known as the Boyne, taking its name from Bo, meaning cow, and the Milky Way, known as Bru an Boinne, the path of the cow.

We should have killed the man, said Aengus, and eaten the cow.

There’ll be more, replied the Leitrim man.

Aengus lay down heartened by the prospect of sleep, his need of argument sated. In some stories, said the Leitrim man, the salmon turns into a young woman who instructs the traveller in the nature of his quest, and sets him a series of tests concerning the logic of the mind and the magic of the senses. Because the traveller is usually a man and the salmon a woman, he is enthralled by her. He thinks of her as cara m’anam, friend of my soul.

The Leitrim man put his hand to his head and continued talking as he lightly stroked his forehead. He thinks from her he will learn all the secrets of knowledge, said Leitrim, especially the secrets of womanhood which have always been denied him since time eternal.

Her secret wish is to have her youth returned to her. But he has no knowledge of this. Or pretends he has not. He accepts the nature of the journey she sets him without question, for this is all part of a quest he must undergo.

A wave of nostalgia overcame Aengus. He listened as one does to a voice reaching across from a further shore.

As did Jonathan Adams. In the version that was being read to him by Catherine, the hero has completed two of the burdens laid on him by the curse of the woman, and, disconsolate and dejected, he sets out on the third. The world through which he wanders is a world where nothing is as it appears. All the ancient stones have crosses chipped onto the spirals to announce that Christ is in the land. All have been exorcized. Writing, which threatens memory, has made its appearance. Animals and humans in one last pagan frenzy are constantly interchanging shapes – I become you, and you become me. And the greatest mistake is to treat any man as a man only, or any woman as a woman only, for each has access to many roles, so many of the traveller’s trials have concerned the humiliations he has undergone because of his prejudices.