• The Salmon of Wisdom

    From David Dalton@dalton@nfld.com to rec.music.celtic, uk.music.folk, rec.music.folk, alt.arts.poetry.comments, rec.arts.poems on Sun Feb 22 17:48:12 2026
    From Newsgroup: rec.arts.poems

    Do you know of any ancient or modern songs or poems
    related to the Salmon of Wisdom?

    Some background, from my post to alt.religion.druid :

    In the Irish tales of Fionn, Finnegas catches the Salmon of Wisdom,
    which is supposedly Fintan in salmon form, after seven years
    of trying, and it is tasted by Fionn.

    Is there any evidence that the Salmon of Wisdom represents
    the salmon-shaped fat waxing crescent moon, which phase
    we are now in (the moon is now at 31.4%, or ten times pi)?

    Of course there are other instances of seven years, as in
    the seven tines of Amergin, the seven years spent as
    hound to the smith of Cu Chulainn, the seven years
    in fairyland of Thomas the Rhymer and in Tam Lin,
    the seven ascetic years of the Buddha, and in the
    following poem:

    Seven years your right,
    under a flagstone, in a quagmire,
    Without food, without taste, but the thirst you ever torturing,
    The law of the judges your lesson, and prayer your language:
    And if you like to return
    You will be, for a time, a Druid, perhaps.
    (Ancient Irish Poem)

    Also in TaliesinrCOs poem The Hostile Confederacy he
    mentions seven score muses, which in lunar months
    is a little more than an 11-year sunspot cycle. If
    that was the time from his sun stare, thorn hill climb,
    and blue rose vision to his release from his low/working
    years and his low/working years started like mine
    a bit more than four years after the sun stare/etc,
    that implies that his low years lasted seven years,
    though he doesnrCOt explicitly mention seven years
    as far as I know.

    However my low/working years, while I expected them
    to end after 29 years (the commonest seven plus two
    11-year sunspot cycles), are now at a bit more than
    30 years. I hope that does not mean I have to wait
    until 36 years (the three years of Jesus plus three
    11-year sunspot cycles, or the fourteen years of
    Rama plus two 11-year sunspot cycle), but that it has
    gone to 30 years just because the current sunspot cycle
    has been lasting longer than the usual 11 years.

    But anyway I am mainly interested in whether the
    Salmon of Wisdom could be the current waxing crescent
    moon, rather than the waning crescent moon of
    my five waning crescent highs from 1991--1994.
    --
    https://www.nfld.com/~dalton/dtales.html Salmon on the Thorns (mystic page) rCLI gave my love a golden feather; I gave my love a heart of stone; When you find a golden feather it means yourCOll never lose your way back homerCY(RR)

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  • From David Dalton@dalton@nfld.com to rec.music.celtic, uk.music.folk, rec.music.folk, alt.arts.poetry.comments, rec.arts.poems on Sun Feb 22 18:42:37 2026
    From Newsgroup: rec.arts.poems

    On Feb 22, 2026, David Dalton wrote
    (in article<0001HW.2F4BAA1401BBBF7330AB5238F@news.eternal-september.org>):

    Do you know of any ancient or modern songs or poems
    related to the Salmon of Wisdom?

    One modern poem is Finistere by Thomas Kinsella.
    --
    https://www.nfld.com/~dalton/dtales.html Salmon on the Thorns (mystic page) rCLI gave my love a golden feather; I gave my love a heart of stone; When you find a golden feather it means yourCOll never lose your way back homerCY(RR)

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  • From georgedance04@georgedance04@yahoo-dot-ca.no-spam.invalid (George J. Dance) to rec.arts.poems on Mon Feb 23 08:33:25 2026
    From Newsgroup: rec.arts.poems

    David Dalton wrote:
    Do you know of any ancient or modern songs or poems
    related to the Salmon of Wisdom?




    I didn't, but I did a search and found this on YouTube:

    The Drunken Bodhrans - The Salmon of Wisdom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQaI5yzSV1I


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    This is a response to the post seen at: http://www.jlaforums.com/viewtopic.php?p=701807609#701807609
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