Saturday, December 3, 2011

The Giants Causeway...

After a few days in Belfast we headed up North to the Giants Causeway, which is a popular natural phenomenon created millions of years ago by volcanic activity. The day we visited wasn't the clearest (or the warmest!) so it was a bit hard to capture the beauty of the place on camera, but it was awesome all the same.

An alternative to the volcano "theory" ...

"Finn McCool (Fionn mac Cumhail) an Irish Giant lived on an Antrim headland and one day when going about his daily business a Scottish Giant named Fingal began to shout insults and hurl abuse from across the channel. In anger Finn lifted a clod of earth and threw it at the giant as a challenge, the earth landed in the sea.

Fingal retaliated with a rock thrown back at Finn and shouted that Finn was lucky that he wasn't a strong swimmer or he would have made sure he could never fight again.

Finn was enraged and began lifting huge clumps of earth from the shore, throwing them so as to make a pathway for the Scottish giant to come and face him. However by the time he finished making the crossing he had not slept for a week and so instead devised a cunning plan to fool the Scot.

Finn diguised himself as a baby in a cot and when his adversary came to face him Finn's wife told the Giant that Finn was away but showed him his son sleeping in the cradle. The Scottish giant became apprehensive, for if the son was so huge, what size would the father be?

In his haste to escape Fingal sped back along the causeway Finn had built, tearing it up as he went. He is said to have fled to a cave on Staffa which is to this day named 'Fingal's Cave'."

(story sourced from http://thenorthernirelandguide.co.uk/giants-causeway-and-legend-finn-mccool)

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