The Giant's Causeway, 1905
"...The sea was rippling quietly on the shore, and the stones of the Causeway were small indeed. Yet there was something remarkable there unlike anything which I had seen before..."
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From Romantic Ireland by M.F. and Blanche McManus Mansfield, 1905.
Two miles east of Dunluce is the old village of Bush Mills, a pretty rural town of about a thousand inhabitants, situated in the midst of a country of grass and grain. The Bush River, upon which it is situated, is a fine stream which turns the wheels of factories and furnishes good fishing.
Making a sharp turn at Bush Mills and proceeding northeast through the green fields and along the rolling hills, one soon reaches the end of the tramway line where he alights and walks up the hill to the tourists' hotel.
The first evening after my arrival I ate supper in a dining-room overlooking the sea, attended by Swiss waiters and entertained by an old German professor who had come hither with his Frau to recuperate after a hard winter's lecturing in one of the universities.
After supper I set out alone to explore the Causeway. I fought off all proffers from guides, for I was determined that this evening should be one of quiet enjoyment of nature.
Descending a long and in some places steep decline, I at last found myself almost on a level with the sea. Here my walk abruptly ended until I produced the sixpence which was required of me before I could be admitted through the turnstile.
"The rocks are wet," said the old gate-keeper. "See that ye keep a firm step over the smooth stones, else we might have to come after ye in a wheelbarrow. But jist go where ye will and enjoy yourself to the utmost."
In ten minutes more I had seen the Giant's Causeway. I hardly knew what to think of it at all. This was one of the world's great wonders, but to me there was nothing sublime there. No lump came into my throat, and no tears into my eyes. I must confess that I was disappointed. I had seen pictures of the Causeway in school geographies when a child, and I expected to see here some of those gigantic masses of rocks and stormy waves. But the sea was rippling quietly on the shore, and the stones of the Causeway were small indeed. Yet there was something remarkable there unlike anything which I had seen before. There spread out before me were forty thousand pillars of stone, all apparently about twenty inches in diameter, and with a few exceptions all having five or six sides, cut with an exactness approximating a geometrical figure.
These pillars, they say, are jointed like bamboo, the sections having a convex base and a concave top. The columns are down on the shore only a few feet above the level of the sea. One may walk around on the tops of the stones where he pleases and make such observations as suits him — wondering the while how it was that Dame Nature should ever have thought of effecting such a freak as this.
After wandering around for some time upon the Causeway stones, I went up and sat on a bench with the keeper and several of his visitors, possibly neighbors of his who had come to look out over the sea, tell stories, and while away the twilight hours. Among them was a Scotch-Irishman of above middle age who talked to me for some time about the Land Act of 1903. He himself had purchased a small farm under this act, paying for it with money borrowed from the Government. He was glad indeed to get from under the thumb of the landlord. He felt now like a free man.
"Now," said he, "I have no more dealings with the landlord than I do with the devil," adding after some thought, "possibly not quite so much." The man was what might be called an uneducated small farmer, though he had good sense and was above the average in powers of conversation. He talked most sensible of Ireland and her problems, choosing rather the Scotch-Irish view of the matter, though he was decidedly democratic in spirit. He would have made a successful farmer in America or a shrewd man of business.
An old woman was seated on a bench near by. She had begun talking to me when I first came in sight, and had kept up her conversation as best she could all the time I sat there. She appeared to be real Irish, and her manner of expression was that of the South. Och! no, I did not have to tell her I was an American. She knew it as soon as I came in sight. She could tell Americans as far as she could see them. Possibly there was some peculiarity in their dress, but it was most of all their quickness and the business-like manner in which they went about everything, even the exploration of the Causeway. They lost no time in anything except the pronunciation of their words and the formation of their sentences. She could not understand this exactly, but she was certain the Irish were much quicker of speech. But how she did like the Americans! They were so cordial and so kind. And she had many friends in the United States. She was sure it must be a "grate counthry."
And the little group continued to talk to me about Ireland, its affairs and its traditions.
Did I see that green island lying out there in the ocean? One of those sitting by asked me. Well, far out beyond it were the many islands off the western coast of Scotland. One of them was the isle of Staffa, and upon it, down on a level with the sea, was Fingal's Cave. Though the nearest Scotch island was scarce thirty miles across the North Channel, yet Staffa was ninety miles away on the north. At one time many, many years ago the Giant's Causeway extended from these cliffs where we sat to Staffa. Any one might be able to see that it had been built by giants. Only giants could hew and handle those mighty stones. The building of it came about in this wise:
Fin MacCoul had for many years been the champion of all Ireland. Not another giant in the country, and there were many, had ever dared openly to oppose him in anything. But over in Scotland there was one great fellow, Benandonner, who was most insolent in the messages which he constantly sent over to Fin. He just wanted to see Fin once and give him a drubbing that he would not soon forget. Only it was winter, and the water was cold, and he did not care to swim over.
Fin applied to the king for permission to construct a causeway connecting the two countries, in order that the Scotchman might have no excuse for not coming. The king gave his permission — he was not unused to allowing Fin to have his way in most things — and the Irishman, who was a rapid workman, lost no time in completing the causeway across to Scotland. The Scotch giant reluctantly came over, but he had no sooner planted his feet on Ulster soil than Fin gave him a beating that left him black and blue for many a day. But, like all true Irishmen, Fin was generous and kind, and he gave Benandonner permission to marry and settle in Ireland. This the Scotch giant was glad to do, being that Scotland is such a poor country to live in anyway, and everybody knows that Ireland is the best country in the world.
After the giants died the causeway went into disuse and gradually sank beneath the waves. Only portions of it might now be seen — at either end and on the coast of Rathlin Island.
Beetling above us were a number of tall slender rocks known as the Chimney-tops. In Elizabeth's time these rocks were battered by cannon-balls from one of the ships of the Spanish Armada whose crew mistook them for the turrets of Dunluce Castle. Thus losing its bearings, and the night being stormy, the ship went down on the rocks in that bay before us. It was now known as Port-na-Spania. Casks of gold were rolled in on the shore by the waves, and they say that the rocks are stained with Spanish wine even to this day. Many years later the skeletons of the lost Spaniards could now and then be found; and sometimes a skull laced up in armor would come in, with death laughing through the chattering jaws.
The sun was nearing the ocean which lay quietly before us. The air was full of the fresh odors of the sea and the bloom of summer flowers on the cliffs. I left the little company there in the quiet of the approaching twilight, and walked up the path along the cliffs. As I went on I got higher and higher above the sea. The scenery grew wilder and the prospects became mightier. In some places the path along the cliffs was cut around boulders or made to hang over dizzy precipices. It was only after I had climbed these heights that I fully understood why the Giant's Causeway is so popular with those who love the beautiful and the wonderful in nature. That marvelous floor of polished hexagons down near the waves perhaps attracted many to the place that they might study the strange formations in stone, but it was these mighty cliffs, reaching from the sea up to dizzy heights that added a touch of the sublime which once having been seen can never be forgotten.
More and more beautiful grew the wide-stretched sea, purpler grew the cliffs, and tenderer the sky. Onward and upward still I went until at last I reached the summit. Be- fore me were no rocky mountain-sides or wastes of stone. Instead, there were meadows flecked with daisies and primroses; and country lanes, enclosed with hawthorn hedges, stretched into the hazy distance of this day of June.
The linnets were singing their evening songs; sweet odors of sod-blossoms and new-mown hay filled the summer air. Far, far out, stretching away from the foot of these giant cliffs, the sea lay, dimpled like some inland lake.
And oh! the glory that filled the sky when the sun sank into the sea! I thought it was worth crossing the ocean only to sit there for an hour upon the sward of matted shamrocks at the top of the beetling heights, with the ocean sleeping at its feet, and watch the blazing red change to gold, and the gold to saffron, and the saffron to pink, — and opaline, and gray, and somber lead — and the evening star and the crescent moon of an Irish summer night.
Mansfield, M.F. and Blanche McManus. Romantic Ireland. L.C. Page & Co, 1905.
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