How did the great Causeway really come to be…

Fionn  MacCool  was the biggest and the strongest giant in all of Ireland. His voice was so very loud that it could be heard for miles around...His hands were so big that he could lift a hundred Irishmen...Despite his strength, Fionn was a gentle soul and lived happily with his wife Oonagh in the hills of County Antrim..he did not wish for battles or war...However, one day a messenger came to Fionn’s castle, he had come all the way from Scotland. The messenger was so tired from the journey that he could hardly speak…hesitant and scared… the messenger told Fionn that a terrifying Scottish giant called Angus wanted to fight him.Angus wanted to show that he was stronger than any giant in the northern seas...

Fionn, who had never seen Angus before, knew that he was the biggest giant in Scotland, however Fionn was not afraid… So the next day, Fionn began to build a path across the sea to Scotland. This path was called the causeway..the great causeway...It was made of thousands of rocks. Fionn built many miles of the causeway with his great hands. Stone by stone, stone after stone, he paved a causeway in the Irish sea.

 

When Angus, the Scottish giant, heard about Fionn’s causeway, he decided to build the Scottish end of the causeway himself. For weeks the two giants worked hard at building the great causeway, stone by stone, stone after stone…One morning Fionn, the Irish giant, was gathering wood near his castle when he saw his wife coming towards him. She said to him: - “Oh! Goodness! I heard that Angus is the biggest and the strongest giant in all the world. He is twice as big as you and twice as strong! Angus wants to fight you tomorrow at sunrise!” Fionn, the Irish giant, was very worried. - “I cannot fight a giant that is twice my size! What shall I do?”After giving it some thought, he had an idea: he went into his bedroom, took the blankets off the bed. Fionn and Oonagh worked through the night. Oonagh cut and sewed the blankets and made giant baby clothes. Fionn worked all night at building a giant cradle...At sunrise, the next morning, Oonagh heard a knock on the door. It was Angus, the fearful giant from Scotland. Angus asked Oonagh if Fionn was there. Oonagh told him that he was gone to gather wood and that he would be back soon. However, cautiously she invited Angus in. It was not long before Angus heard a loud cry. Angus, the Scottish giant, asked whom it was, pointing to the cradle.Oonagh said- “That’s little young Fionn, our baby."Angus stared at the cradle and was surprised to see the size of Fionn's baby...and then he thought- "If this is the size of their baby, how big could Fionn be?"Frightened, he ran out of the castle as fast as he could. He ran across the causeway destroying it in his way….and did not stop until he reached his country for he was afraid that Fionn might follow him.So today, if you go to County Antrim, you can still see a small piece of the causeway. It is called the Giant’s Causeway, because it was built by Fionn Mac Cool, the most famous giant in the history of Ireland.

Ilda Camarneira