The Tale of Finn McCool

 Susan, only a trainee tour guide, was very, very good. She told us all about how the Giant’s causeway was formed from volcanic rock, cooling quickly on the top, but much slower at the bottom, and how one crack appeared in a hexagon and before a few million years passed, all the rocks had continued to crack in that same pattern. 

Finally she told the real story which was about the giant, Finn McCool. He was 54 feet (about 18m) and had a lovely wife, Mrs McCool and a son who was young. One day he spied another giant over on Scotland.

Brief diversion- on a clear day you can see Donegal to the west and on a very clear day you can see an island of Scotland. Well our day was cool and intermittently cloudy, but we could see Scotland for a five minute period and I was watching very carefully.

So the two giants got into a bit of a slanging match, about who was the best giant and the biggest giant. And one day Finn started throwing rocks at the other giant, and because he was a giant these were very big rocks and built a sort of walkway to Scotland. They call this path a causeway. He ran across it. When he found the sleeping giant in Scotland, he saw that the other giant was twice as tall as him!

He ran away as quick as he could, but because he slipped and got his foot wet, and giants hate getting wet, he screamed - which woke the other giant. The Scottish giant ran after him. So Finn now begged his wife to help him, and she told him to wrap a white blanket around his naked body, and lie down in the son’s cot. So when the Scottish giant arrived she said, “Oh my husband is off fishing. But would you like to see our son, who is having his nap. When the Scottish giant saw Finn dressed up as a baby, he got quite a fright. “If the baby is that big then the Irish giant must be massive, so I had better get home as quick as I can”. And in running away he caused the causeway to crumble into the sea.

So ends the tale of Finn McCool and his very clever wife.

We were very surprised at how many hundreds of people were climbing all over the rocks. But they have been there for 65 million years and only deliberate quarrying has ever harmed it.

Now the rocks are recognized as a major tourist site. This started in the late 1700s after a female artist came down to draw them.

We were very brave and walked out to nearly the end of the biggest causeway, where the sea was getting rough and the algae was looking slipprier’. 

So as so-so as it might look in my photos, it was pretty spectacular. On to Belfast.