Giant's Causeway | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

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tiompan Jan 27, 2013 11:40:28

Replying to GLADMAN

There's nothing mentioned in the SMR .

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tjj Jan 27, 2013 15:44:59

Replying to GLADMAN

GLADMAN wrote:

Just happened to come across an old image of the Giant's Causeway the other day.... and the thought occurred whether evidence of any prehistoric ritual activity has ever come to light? Well it is a pretty special place, despite the crowds. A 'natural rock feature' if ever there was one.

If anyone has seen/heard anything it would be great to know.

There seems to be quite a bit of prehistoric archaeology in Antrim but not actually by the Giant's Causeway. It is, however, part of the ancient kingdom of Dalriada (Dal Riata) which extended to the Inner Hebrides and the west coast of Scotland.
Dalriada

I found the link posted by Nigel Swift with regard to a nearby golf course development disconcerting and the National Trust in N.I. are making a brave stand against it. This surely must be a place to keep wild and natural.

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Littlestone Jan 27, 2013 18:49:18

Replying to GLADMAN

Not sure if the Causeway is part of the same geological feature as Fingal's Cave but there is a connection of sorts -

It 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") through a misapprehension of the name which in old Gaelic would appear as Finn. The legend has Fionn or Finn building the causeway between Ireland and Scotland. (Wiki).

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ryaner Jan 27, 2013 19:54:54

Replying to GLADMAN

Haven't read all of this:

http://www.voicesfromthedawn.com/the-giants-causeway/

but it's from a site with the same tastes as here.

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Howburn Digger Jan 27, 2013 21:04:28

Replying to GLADMAN

I lived near the Giant's Causeway (at Portrush) for three years in the 1980's. I used to love the get the bus out to the GC. The steep path down to the site was a real toil back then (no nice smooth footpath as now!) but once you were down there, you were effectively cut off from everything above. The coastal path which goes along by the GC and round the dizzying headlands and tightly enclosed bays is strangely claustrophobic at points. You cannot see anything above.
As for golf courses the area is very well catered for in that respect. There is the Ballyreagh Course, Royal Portrush and another one between Bushmills and Portballantrae (close to the GC). The Pringle wearers aren't exactly suffering from a lack of available links. Not a "sport" I enjoy but I really cant see any clifftop golf club development having any impact on the Causeway or the coastal path.
The GC itself is a truly magical and strange place to visit. The formations and columns are bewildering. On the walk down from the clifftop to the sea, you can see Islay and the Paps of Jura in the distance. The cliffs themselves have massive sections where you can make out the huge columnar basalt like the pipes of a huge church organ. The actual causeway section at the sea is a baffling jigsaw of beautifully formed geometric shapes.
Many of the gardens in Portballantrae and Portrush sport rockeries with parts of the GC.

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Zariadris Jan 29, 2013 05:04:20

Replying to GLADMAN

GLADMAN wrote:

Just happened to come across an old image of the Giant's Causeway the other day.... and the thought occurred whether evidence of any prehistoric ritual activity has ever come to light? Well it is a pretty special place, despite the crowds. A 'natural rock feature' if ever there was one.

If anyone has seen/heard anything it would be great to know.

There is at least one folk ritual associated with the Causeway: the Wishing Chair. I know of this thanks to 19th century photos of the site, depicting local peasant women sitting in a natural, bench-like clearing said to have been fashioned and used by old Fin MacCoul himself. Tradition said that if you made a wish while sitting there, it'd sure enough come true.

Like so many customs connected with natural and man-made stones, the Wishing Chair reveals an archaic sense of a numinous world, where odd stone formations are manifestations of supernatural power, connected as they most often are with women, healing and fertility. As quaint as the Wishing Chair may seem, as a ritual it strikes me as fundamentally pre-historic in spirit, if not in fact, insofar as it seems to echo these timeless concerns, and most importantly, taps into an agrarian, pre-modern worldview that sees time as cyclical, not linear, and casts past events as myth, not history.