The following interesting story, which, so far as I know, has never been noted, has come down to us in a late Middle Irish text from which I now translate it for the first time. My attention was first called to it years ago by my friend, Dr. Nicholas O'Donnell of Melbourne, an Australian born and bred, but a good Irish scholar, who made a transcript of the story for me from an Irish MS. which he picked up in Australia. It may well have been taken from a vellum, for the initial letter is omitted and a great space left for the scribe to insert it in colours later on. I have carefully compared the copy of the Australian text with four other copies which I find in the Royal Irish Academy, the oldest of which however only dates from 1788, but I found virtually no difference between them, and it is evident that they are all drawn from the same original. There seems to be no variant known. There is an ancient poem of great interest bearing on this story, called the Colloquy between Fintan and the Hawk of Achill. It is in Egerton, 1782, and the text was published in "Anecdota from Irish MSS." vol. I., p. 24, but has never been translated. Fintan, who survived the flood, holds colloquy with the bird, which asked him about his life, and Fintan asks the bird's age. "O hawk from cold Achill take a benison and a victory, from the time you were born of an egg, tell the number of [the years of] your life."
"I am of the same age as thou, O Fintan, son of Bochra." The Bird asks Fintan "since he was a poet and a prophet" to tell him the greatest evils he had ever experienced. We learn from the answer that the ancient salmon in our story was really a rebirth of Fintan himself, and it is exceedingly interesting to find the wily old crow[19] who ate Léithin's young ones, appear upon the scene again, as a leading personage in another drama. Fintan tells how the Creator placed him in the cold streams in the shape of a salmon, how he frequented the Boyne, the Bush, the Bann, the Suck, the Suir, the Shannon, the Slaney, the Liffey, etc., etc. At last he came to Assaroe.
"A night I was on the wave in the north and I at seal-frequented Assaroe. I never experienced a night like that from the beginning to the end of my time.[20]
"I could not remain in the waterfall. I give a leap—it was no luck for me—the ice comes like blue glass between me and the pool of the son of Modharn.
"There comes a crow out of cold Achill, above the inver of Assaroe, I shall not hide it, though it is a thing to keep as a secret. He swept away with him one of my eyes.
"The Goll or Blind One of Assaroe has clung to me [as a name] from that night. Rough the deed. I am ever since without my eye. No wonder for me to be aged."
The Bird.
"It was I who swallowed thy eye, O Fintan. I am the grey Hawk, who be's alone in the waist of Achill."
Fintan demands eric [recompense] for his eye, but the implacable old crow answers:
"Little eric would I give thee, O Fintan, son of Bochra the soft, but that one remaining eye in the withered head quickly would I swallow it of one morsel."