Fingals Cave

Fingal's Cave , cavern, 227 ft (69 m) long, celebrated for its unusual beauty, on Staffa island, one of the Inner Hebrides, W Scotland. The entrance is an archway supported by basaltic columns 20 to 40 ft (6.1-12.2 m) high. The cave is inundated by the sea. Felix Mendelssohn composed an overture called The Hebrides or Fingal's Cave.

Fingal's Cave. An imposing basaltic cavern on the now uninhabited island of Staffa in the Inner Hebrides, 6 miles N of Iona. Popular tradition, unsupported by the text of The Poems of Ossian, has associated the cave with James Macpherson's character Fingal. Felix Mendelssohn brought the cave to European attention by using the name ‘Fingal's Cave’ as the subtitle of his Hebrides Overture (1829). ‘Fingal’ is a part of more than twenty other place-names in the Scottish Highlands, e.g. Fingal's Grave, near Killin, Perthshire; Fingal's Seat, a mountain at the head of Portree Loch, Isle of Skye; Fingal's Griddle, ancient remains north-west of Sunart, Argyllshire, etc.

Fingal's Cave (The Hebrides) (Die Hebriden (Fingals Höhle)). Ov. in B minor, Op.26, by Mendelssohn, who is said to have invented the prin. theme while on a visit to the Hebrides and the island of Staffa in 1829. (In fact he jotted down the theme in a letter written before he went to Staffa. The orig. version was called The Lonely Island.) Comp. 1830, rev. 1832. After rev. the work was f.p., as The Isles of Fingal, London, CG 1832. It is in effect a descriptive tone-poem.