Fingal's Cave
| Fingal's Cave Gaelic: An Uaimh Bhinn | |||
| Argyllshire | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 Entrance to Fingal's cave | |||
| Staffa | |||
| Access: | public | ||
| Hazards: | partially filled by the sea, slippery rocks | ||
Fingal's Cave is a famous sea cave on the uninhabited island of Staffa, in the Inner Hebrides, within Argyllshire. The cave is known for its natural acoustics, and for its drama and location it has been celebrated in romances and music.
The National Trust for Scotland owns the cave as part of a National Nature Reserve.[1]
The cave became known as 'Fingal's Cave' after the eponymous hero of an epic poem by 18th-century poet James Macpherson.
Contents
Formation
Fingal's Cave is formed entirely from hexagonally jointed basalt columns within a Paleocene lava flow,[2] similar in structure to the Giant's Causeway in County Antrim, to which it is linked in legend, and those of nearby Ulva.
In all these cases, cooling on the upper and lower surfaces of the solidified lava resulted in contraction and fracturing, starting in a blocky tetragonal pattern and transitioning to a regular hexagonal fracture pattern with fractures perpendicular to the cooling surfaces.[3] As cooling continued these cracks gradually extended toward the centre of the flow, forming the long hexagonal columns we see in the wave-eroded cross-section today. Similar hexagonal fracture patterns are found in desiccation cracks in mud where contraction is due to loss of water instead of cooling.[4]
Acoustics
The cave's size and naturally arched roof,[5] and the eerie sounds produced by the echoes of waves, give it the atmosphere of a natural cathedral. The cave's Gaelic name, An Uaimh Bhinn, means "the melodious cave."
History
Little is known of the early history of Staffa. Part of the Ulva estate of the Clan MacQuarrie from an early date until 1777,[6] the cave was brought to the attention of the English-speaking world by 18th-century naturalist and scientist Sir Joseph Banks in 1772.[7][8]
He cavern became known as Fingal's Cave after the eponymous hero of an epic poem by 18th century Scots poet-historian James Macpherson. It formed part of his Ossian cycle of poems claimed to have been based on old Scottish Gaelic poems. In Irish mythology, the hero Fingal is known as Fionn mac Cumhaill, and it is suggested that Macpherson rendered the name as Fingal (meaning "white stranger"[9]) through a misapprehension of the name (which in old Gaelic would appear as Finn).[10] The legend of the Giant's Causeway has Fionn or Finn building a causeway between Ireland and Scotland, so Staffa becomes in legend the "other end" of the Giant's Causeway.[11]
Sightseeing
The cave has a large arched entrance and is filled by the sea. Several sightseeing cruises organised from April to September by local companies pass the entrance to the cave.[5][7] It is also possible to land elsewhere on the island (as some of these cruises permit) and walk overland to the cave, where a row of fractured columns forms a walkway just above high-water level permitting exploration on foot.[12] From the inside, the entrance seems to frame the island of Iona across the water.[5]
In art and literature
Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn visited in 1829 and wrote an overture, The Hebrides, Op. 26, (also known as Fingal's Cave overture), inspired by the weird echoes in the cave.[7][13] Mendelssohn's overture popularized the cave as a tourist destination.[7][8] Other famous 19th-century visitors included author Jules Verne, who used it in his book Le Rayon vert (The Green Ray), and mentions it in the novels Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Mysterious Island; poets William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson;[1] andRomantic artist J. M. W. Turner, who painted "Staffa, Fingal's Cave" in 1832.[14] Queen Victoria also made the trip.[1][7]
The playwright August Strindberg also set scenes from his play A Dream Play in a place called "Fingal's Grotto". Scots novelist Sir Walter Scott described Fingal's Cave as "one of the most extraordinary places I ever beheld. It exceeded, in my mind, every description I had heard of it... composed entirely of basaltic pillars as high as the roof of a cathedral, and running deep into the rock, eternally swept by a deep and swelling sea, and paved, as it were, with ruddy marble, [it] baffles all description."[12]
Artist Matthew Barney used the cave along with the Giant's Causeway for the opening and closing scenes of his art film, Cremaster 3. In 2008, the video artist Richard Ashrowan spent several days recording the interior of Fingal's Cave for an exhibition at the Foksal Gallery in Poland.
One of Pink Floyd's early songs bears this location's name. This instrumental was written for the film Zabriskie Point but not used.[15]
Celtic rock band Wolfstone recorded an instrumental titled Fingal's Cave on their 1999 album Seven.
Dimensions
- Wood-Nuttall Encyclopaedia, 1907 states: 227 feet deep, 66 feet high.[16]
- 'Show Caves of the World' states: 279 feet deep; 75 feet high.[7]
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Fingal's Cave) |
- Engraving of Fingal's cave by James Fittler in the digitised copy of Scotia Depicta, or the antiquities, castles, public buildings, noblemen and gentlemen's seats, cities, towns and picturesque scenery of Scotland, 1804 (NLS)
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 National Trust for Scotland: Fingal's Cave
- ↑ Bell, B.R. and Jolley, D.W. (1997) "Application of palynological data to the chronology of the Palaeogene lava fields of the British Province: implications for magmatic stratigraphy". Journal of the Geological Society. London. Vol. 154, pp. 701–708.
- ↑ Atilla Aydin and James M. Degraff (1988) "Evolution of Polygonal Fracture Patterns in Lava Flows," Science 29 January 1988: 239 (4839), 471-476. [1]
- ↑ Lucas Goehring, L. Mahadevan, and Stephen W. Morris (2009) "Nonequilibrium scale selection mechanism for columnar jointing". PNAS 2009 106 (2) 387-392 [2]
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Staffa (Fingal's Cave) and the Treshnish Islands
- ↑ Haswell-Smith (2004) p. 124
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 Show Caves of the World
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Caves and Caving in the UK
- ↑ Behind the Name: View Name: Fingal
- ↑ Notes to the first edition
- ↑ Formation of basalt columns / pseudocrystals
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 Gordon Grant Tours: Fingal's Cave
- ↑ Galveston Symphony Program Notes: Mendelssohn
- ↑ The Art Archive, JM Turner
- ↑ "Unreleased Pink Floyd material" The Pink Floyd Hyperbase. Retrieved 3 August 2008.
- ↑ Wood-Nuttall Encyclopaedia, 1907
- Haswell-Smith, Hamish (2004). The Scottish Islands. Edinburgh: Canongate. ISBN 1841954543.
