Standish O'Grady; selected essays and passages

IRISH BARDIC HISTORY 79
But Sinan, who was of the race of Lear, the marine
god, having an evil mind, resolved to eat of the fruit,
and she approached the fountain by stealth. But the
divine fountain arose in wrath with a roaring, with
billows and water-spouts and foam, .
and it caught and
surrounded her, and overwhelmed her as she fled, and
whirling her along and around, brake forth westward and
southward. And, like a dead leaf, it bore her past the
Great Ford, and past the city of the hostings and the
fairy hills, where Bove Derg had his habitation, and
past Limenich, and cast her into the great sea westward.
But thenceforward the waters of western Erin flowed along
the channel which had been made by the flood which the
sacred well-head had cast forth against the grand-
daughter of Lear, and after her it has received
its name.
Unseen by the Gaeil the fountain still springs, feeding
the great stream of Fohla, and the hazels shed their crim-
son fruit on the mossy ground, and into the clear water,
and beneath the ground it sends forth rills feeding the
great streams. But at the time of the shedding of fruit,
a salmon, the Yeo Feasa, appears in that garden in the
clear well, and as each divine nut falls upon the surface,
he darts upwards and devours it. He is larger and more
beautiful than the fishes of his tribe, glittering with
crimson stars and bright hues ;
but for the rest of the year
he roams the wide ocean and the great streams of Inis Fail.
Now when any of the Gaeil excelled in wisdom, men said
he has eaten of the nuts of knowledge, and of Cathvah,
too, the Ard-Druid, men said this.