salmon

salmon [L salmō]. The large fish with pinkish flesh (genus Salmo salar) has long played an important role in the Celtic imagination, usually as a repository of otherworldly wisdom, especially in Ireland and Wales. A relief found in Gaul shows a human head between two great salmon. In a Gallo-Roman altar a fish (probably a salmon) is shown talking into the ear of a human head. Nodons, ancient British god of the Severn, is shown hooking a salmon. Although salmon swim from salt to fresh water to spawn, Irish and Welsh traditions often portray them as inhabiting wells, pools, waterfalls, or other fixed locations along important rivers like the Boyne or Severn. Two salmon of wisdom or knowledge lived in Ireland, at Linn Féic along the Boyne and at the falls of Assaroe on the Erne, both caught by Fionn mac Cumhaill. In the better-known story of the two, the bard Finnéces had been fishing for the salmon for seven years when the boy Fionn happened along. Finnéces thought his patience had paid off when he caught the salmon and began cooking it over a fire; but Fionn touched the cooking salmon with his thumb, burning it, and thrust it into his mouth, thus giving to himself the otherworldly wisdom Finnéces sought. Here the salmon bears a name, Fintan (1). When Fionn spears the salmon on his own at the falls of Assaroe it is known as Goll Essa Ruaid [the one-eyed fish of Assaroe]. A comparable Welsh salmon of wisdom swims under the name Llyn Llyw along the Severn and is ‘the oldest of living creatures’, ‘the wisest of forty animals’; it tells Culhwch where Mabon is being held prisoner. Leixlip, Co. Kildare, on the Liffey also has strong associations with salmon [ON leax hlaup, salmon leap; Ir. Léim an Bhradáin].

In Irish tradition salmon gain wisdom by eating the nuts of hazel trees; the number of spots on the salmon's back shows how many nuts he has consumed. Nine hazels of wisdom grow at the heads of the seven chief rivers of Ireland and at Connla's Well and the well of Segais. In Osraige [Ossory] salmon eat berries to the same effect. If salmon do not embody wisdom, they may carry important knowledge between persons, just as ravens delivered messages to the Norse Odin. The Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym (fl. 1320–70) claimed that expressions of love for the beautiful Morfydd might be carried by salmon.

Humans and salmon interact in a variety of other ways. Several personages are transformed partly or completely into salmon, including Amairgin (1), Fintan mac Bóchra, and Taliesin, just as Loki in Norse tradition once became a salmon to escape detection. Tuan mac Cairill becomes a salmon that is caught by a woman, who eats him and then gives birth to him again in human form so that he may tell the early history of Ireland. For Mongán, becoming a salmon is just one of his powers. The ‘soul’ of the hero Cú Roí resides in a golden apple inside a certain salmon; to kill him, Cúchulainn has first to kill the salmon with Cú Roí's own sword. The beauteous Lí Ban (2) of Lough Neagh becomes a salmon except for her head. The mother of St Fínán Cam is impregnated by a salmon when she goes swimming after dark. Ailill throws a ring into the water, which is swallowed by a salmon and retrieved by Fráech (folk motif: 736A). St Kentigern also finds a ring in a salmon, which explains the presence of salmon in the seal of the City of Glasgow.

Modern commentators have been at a loss to explain the mythic power of the salmon. Its swimming between salt and fresh water may have suggested the capacity to pass between worlds. The ability to swim against the stream over waterfalls easily excites human admiration; see SALMON LEAP. The Roman poet Catullus (1st cent. BC) equated the leaping salmon with an erect phallus. Pinkish salmon flesh may evoke human flesh. Seán O'Faoláin (1947) suggested that the Irish, lacking serpents, may have adopted the salmon as an alternative transformation of the sun-god. OIr. eó, eú, éicne, bratán, maigre, magar (as spawn); ModIr. bradán, diúilín (young salmon); ScG bradan, iasg geal [bright fish]; Manx braddan; W eog, samwn; Corn. ēok; Bret. eog.

Bibliography

See Richard I. Best , ‘The Tragic Death of Cúroí mac Dári’, Ériu, 2 (1911), 18–35.