The Dagda’s wife was called Boann. She was connected in legend with the River Boyne, to which she gave its name, and, indeed, its very existence.[75] Formerly there was only a well[76], shaded by nine magic hazel-trees. These trees bore crimson nuts, and it was the property of the nuts that whoever ate of them immediately became possessed of the knowledge of everything that was in the world. The story is, in fact, a Gaelic version of the Hebrew myth of “the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil”. One class of creatures alone had this privilege—divine salmon who lived in the well, and swallowed the nuts as they dropped from the trees into the water, and thus knew all things, and appear in legend as the “Salmons of Knowledge”. All others, even the highest gods, were forbidden to approach the place. Only Boann, with the proverbial woman’s curiosity, dared to disobey this fixed law. She came towards the sacred well, but, as she did so, its waters rose up at her, and drove her away before them in a mighty, rushing flood. She escaped; but the waters never returned. They made the Boyne; and as for the all-knowing inhabitants of the well, they wandered disconsolately through the depths of the river, looking in vain for their lost nuts. One of these salmon was afterwards eaten by the famous Finn mac Coul, upon whom all its omniscience descended.[77] This way of accounting for the existence of a river is a favourite one in Irish legend. It is told also of the Shannon, which burst, like the Boyne, from an inviolable well, to pursue another presumptuous nymph called Sinann, a granddaughter of the sea-god Lêr.[78] The Dagda had several children, the most important of whom are Brigit, Angus, Mider, Ogma, and Bodb the Red. Of these, Brigit will be already familiar to English readers who know nothing of Celtic myth. Originally she was a goddess of fire and the hearth, as well as of poetry, which the Gaels deemed an immaterial, supersensual form of flame. But the early Christianizers of Ireland adopted the pagan goddess into their roll of saintship, and, thus canonized, she obtained immense popularity as Saint Bridget, or Bride.[79] Angus was called _Mac Oc_, which means the “Son of the Young”, or, perhaps, the “Young God”. This most charming of the creations of the Celtic mythology is represented as a Gaelic Eros, an eternally youthful exponent of love and beauty. Like his father, he had a harp, but it was of gold, not oak, as the Dagda’s was, and so sweet was its music that no one could hear and not follow it. His kisses became birds which hovered invisibly over the young men and maidens of Erin, whispering thoughts of love into their ears. He is chiefly connected with the banks of the Boyne, where he had a “brugh”, or fairy palace; and many stories are told of his exploits and adventures.