"I'll go right away to her this moment,"[41] said the Crow.
"Wait yet," said the Trout, "until I tell you my own story. I was swimming on the surface of this pool one fine calm evening, as calm and as fine as any evening that ever I saw. There were thousands of flies above the pool. I sprang upward to catch the full of my mouth of them, and before I reached back again into the water there was ice on the [surface of the] water, and I was jumping and floundering on the flag of ice until the raven[42] came and picked the eyes out of my head. My share of blood began running fast[43] out of me, and I was there until the heat of the blood melted the flag of ice that was on the water, down through it, and let me down into the water again. That was the coldest night that I ever felt myself, and that is the way I lost my sight. I was christened the Blind Trout of Assaroe ever since, but some of the people call me the Old Trout of Assaroe. Alas, my bitter misfortune! I am ever since without sight."
The Crow heard him out, but he would not be easy or satisfied in his own mind until he should go on a visit to the Old Woman of Beare.
"Farewell, Trout," said he, "I must go to the Old Woman now until I hear her own story."
"May your journey succeed with you Crow, you will have neither loss nor hurt in the house of the Old Woman," said the Trout.
The Crow went off then, and he never stopped nor stayed until he came to the Old Woman's house.
"Welcome, O Crow out of Achill," said she. "What is this has happened to you, or where are your plumage and feathers?"
"They are gone with the big wind," said he; and with that he told his story to the Old Woman from beginning to end, and he put the same question to her that he had put before that to the Eagle and to the Trout—Did she ever feel any night that was as sore and venemous as last night?