Fingal's Cave

Where is the Fingal's Cave?

The great cave named after the legendary Celtic hero Finn MacCool, or Fingal, is at the southern end of the isle of Staffa, seven miles west of Mull, one of the larger island of the Inner Hebrides off Scotland’s west coast. Fingal’s Cave is 227 feet long, 42 feet wide and 66 feet high.

The intrance is an arch supported by basaltic pillars of aweinspiring symmetry and, from there to the cave’s end, there is a pavement to broken pillars. These pillars, either hexagonal (six sided) or pentagonal (five-sided), form colonnaded walls elsewhere on the south and west of Staffa. The 71-acre island’s name means Pillar Island in Norse.

Apart from its natural splendour, the cave is famous for its “music”, heard from afar when heavy seas are running. Air, raised to a pressure of several tons to the square inch by driving force of the sea surging into the cave, rushes out through cracks and fissures in the rock when the water recedes. This creates the musical sounds which have been described by some visitors as “like trumpets blowing”. The composer Mendelssohn was inspired by this music as well as by the grandeur of Staffa in writing his Hebrides overture.