Once upon a time there was an Irish giant named Finn MacCool, or Fionn mac Cumhaill as he called himself in his native language. Finn wasn’t a Jack-in-the-Beanstalk kind of giant. He didn’t eat little children. Nor was he an ogre. He was pretty much a happy-go-lucky kind of guy, just very large. Finn used his hunting and warrior skills to fight evil, for the most part, but occasionally also took care of a few items on his own agenda, as is a giant’s prerogative.
When Finn was a boy, he trained under the druid Finnegas. Finnegas had spent seven years trying to catch the Salmon of Knowledge, a wonder of a fish that lived in the River Boyne and had become all-knowing by living off the hazelnuts of a holy tree. Whoever ate the Salmon of Knowledge would gain from it all the knowledge of the world.
While Finn was under the druid’s care, Finnegas finally caught the fish-of-all-fish. He told Finn to cook it for him, which he did while Finnegas eagerly anticipated his eye-opening meal. But while cooking, Finn burned his thumb and instinctively put it in his mouth, thereby tasting the fish and receiving its knowledge. Far from being angry, when Finnegas saw the light of knowledge in Finn’s eye he made sure Finn polished off every last bite of the salmon. Finn was able to call upon this knowledge in future confrontations with his enemies.
Finn decided to build a path of stepping stones across the twelve miles of water between Ireland and Scotland so he could easily cross without getting his feet wet. One day as he was working on it, he heard that a nasty old giant named Benandonner (definitely one of the ogrey kind) was looking for him. Knowing Benandonner was up to no good, Finn asked his wife Oona to help him hide. Oona dressed Finn as a baby and put him in a cradle. When Benandonner showed up, Oona told him Finn was away but was expected back at any moment. She offered Benandonner a griddle cake she was making. Unbeknownst to Benandonner, Oona had baked griddle irons into some of them. Benandonner took a bite, broke his teeth, and howled like a baby. Oona made fun of him, calling him weak. She fed a cake (without metal in it) to her “baby” who, of course, gobbled it down quite easily. Benandonner, afraid of what the father of this monster-child must be like, decided to clear out before Finn got home. He fled across the causeway to Scotland, destroying it as he went so that Finn couldn’t follow him.
The Giant’s Causeway is a geological wonder of over 40,000 interlocking basalt columns created by the slow cooling and shrinking of lava flows under the sea over 60 million years ago. It is like nothing I have seen before.
This crazy, curious landscape, and the engaging legend the Irish created centuries ago to explain it, is what brought me to Northern Ireland. The rest is icing on the cake.
