The Legend of Finn McCool

The Giant's Causeway looks like Hell with the fire put out. It claws into a dark tranche of sea towards Scotland like an unfinished bridge, a honeycomb stretch of oversized basalt columns organized like stepping stones. How did this happen? Legend has it rival giants, Irish Finn McCool and the Scottish Benandonner, once taunted one another from their respective shores. Finn's resourceful wife is said to have disguised her husband as a baby and hid him in a crib. When Benandonner saw the giant baby, he hightailed it back to Scotland not wanting to encounter the dad and in the process, tore up the causeway so that Finn McCool could not follow. Lesser minds suggest it is all the result of a pool of bubbling lava slowly cooling into 40,000 columns 60 million years ago. Whatever the origins, it is a black reach totally subordinated to nature. Credits: Photo courtesy of Mattman (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mattman/).