Giant's Causeway

The Giant's Causeway — some 40,000 hexagonal basalt columns stepping out into the sea from the Antrim coast — was explained for centuries not by geology but by the rivalry between two giants. According to the tale, Fionn mac Cumhaill, champion of Ireland, was challenged by the Scottish giant Benandonner to single combat. Fionn built a causeway of stone across the North Channel so his opponent could cross to fight him on Irish soil.

When Fionn finally caught sight of Benandonner striding across the new causeway, he realised — too late — that the Scottish giant dwarfed him completely. His wife Oonagh saved him with a trick: she dressed Fionn as a baby and tucked him into an enormous cradle, then served Benandonner a griddle cake with an iron griddle hidden inside. Benandonner bit down and cracked his teeth, while 'the baby' was fed a normal cake and ate it without trouble. Reasoning that if the infant was this size, its father must be a giant beyond anything he could survive, Benandonner fled back across the causeway to Scotland — tearing it up behind him so that Fionn could not follow.

The story conveniently accounts for the causeway's abrupt, broken-off appearance, and for the matching hexagonal basalt columns of Fingal's Cave on the Scottish island of Staffa, said to be the Scottish end of the same shattered road. Geologists attribute both formations to the same ancient lava flow, cooling and cracking into columns some 60 million years ago — but the tale of Fionn, Oonagh and the terrified Benandonner remains the version visitors hear first at what is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Northern Ireland's most-visited natural attraction.