The Giant’s Causeway is a formation of some 40,000 basaltic columns, resulting from volcanic action about 60 million years ago, that extends about eight miles into the sea, east-northeast of Portrush. Its Irish name is Clochán nabh Fomhoraigh – ‘stepping-stones of the Fomorians’ – evil gods or giants of Irish myth, who are supposed to have begun it as a causeway from Ireland to Scotland. ‘Giant’ is now in the singular, however, because another legend says that it was constructed by the folk hero, Finn mac Cool, better known as Fingal, the father of Ossian (Fingal’s Cave, in the Inner Hebrides, is likewise a basaltic formation). It and surrounding cliffland were given by Sir Antony Macnaghten (1899–1972), 10th Bt and the Ulster Land Fund in 1962–1963.