An Chraobh Airgid

Place

The Fountain of Knowledge

The shining fountain in the Land of Promise, with five streams flowing out of it.

Open it on the full site There every name opens, and a web shows who is kin to whom.

Nine purple hazels of Buan grow over it and drop their nuts into it, and five salmon split the nuts and send the husks down the streams. Manannán told Cormac what it meant: the streams are the five senses, through which knowledge comes, and no one has knowledge who has not drunk both from the fountain and from the streams. The Well on this site draws on it.

In the tales

  • Cormac and the Silver Branch A grey-haired stranger brings Cormac a silver branch whose music puts every sorrow to sleep. The price: his daughter, his son and his wife.

See also

  • Cormac mac Airt The wise king of Tara.
  • Manannán mac Lir “Son of the sea”: lord of the Otherworld across the water.
  • Nechtan Lord of the síd where the Boyne rises, and keeper of the secret well.

Sources

Medieval manuscript. Written down by Irish scholars between the eighth and seventeenth centuries.

Each tale above lists the sources it is retold from. Every source the site draws on is listed on the full site.