"I chanced to be one morning that was fair, on this river, O Léithin, I never experienced a morning like that, either before it or after it.
"I gave a leap into the air under the brow of my hard rock [here], and before I came down into my house [of water] this pool was one flag of ice.
"The bird of prey[36] seized me above the land with a furious ungentle onslaught, and bore away my clear blue eye. To me it was not a pleasant world."
"Well now, my own object in coming to thee," said Léithin, "was to enquire of thee whether thou dost ever remember such a morning as was yesterday?"
"Indeed saw I such a morning," quoth Goll. "I remember the coming of the deluge, and I remember the coming of Partholan and of Fintan and the children of Neimhidh and the Fir Bolg and the Tuatha De Danann, and the Fomorians and the sons of Milesius and Patrick son of Alprunn, and I remember how Ireland threw off from her those troops, and I remember a morning that was worse than that morning, another morning not speaking of the great showers out of which the deluge fell. And the deluge left only four men and four women, namely, Noe, son of Laimhfhiadh and his wife, and Sem, Cam and Japhet, and their three wives, for in truth that was the crew of the ark, and neither [church] man nor canon reckon that God left undestroyed in the world but those four. However, wise men truly recount that God left another four keeping knowledge and tribal-descent and preserving universal genealogies, for God did not wish the histories of the people to fade, and so he left Fintan son of Laimhfhiadh towards the setting of the sun, south, keeping an account of the west of the world, and, moreover, Friomsa Fhurdhachta keeping the lordship of the north, and the prophet and the Easba? duly ordering [the history of the] south. And those are they who were alive outside of the ark, and I remember all those people. And Léithin," said Goll, "I never saw the like of that morning for vemon except one other morning that was worse than the morning that you speak of, and worse than any morning that ever came before it. It was thus. One day I was in this pool and I saw a beautifully coloured butterfly with purple spots in the air over my head. I leapt to catch it, and before I came down the whole pool had become one flag of ice behind me, so that [when I fell back] it bore me up. And then there came the bird of prey[37] to me, on his seeing me [in that condition], and he gave a greedy venemous assault on me and plucked the eye out of my head, and only for my weight he would have lifted me, and he threw the eye into the pool, and we both wrestled together until we broke the ice with the violence of the struggle, and with the [heat of the] great amount of crimson-red blood that was pouring from my eye, so that the ice was broken by that, so that with difficulty I got down into the pool [again], and that is how I lost my eye. And it is certain O Léithin," said Goll, "that that was by far the worst morning that I ever saw, and worse than this morning that thou speakest of."
Now as for the clerics, they took council with one another, and determined to await [the eagle's return] that they might know what she had to relate. However they experienced such hardships and anguish from the cold and misery of the night, and they could not [despite their resolution] endure to abide [the eagle's return]. So Maolan, the cleric, said, "I myself beseech the powerful Lord, and the chosen Trinity, that the eagle, Léithin, may come with the knowledge she receives to Clonmacnoise and tell it to Ciaran," [and therewith they themselves departed.]
Now as for Goll [the salmon], he asked Léithin, after that, who was it that sent her in pursuit of that knowledge.
"It was the second bird of my own birds."