Fingal's Cave - in Art and Literature

In Art and Literature

Romantic composer Felix Mendelssohn visited in 1829 and wrote Die Hebriden (in English, Hebrides Overture Opus 26, commonly known as Fingal's Cave overture), inspired by the weird echoes in the cave. Mendelssohn's overture popularized the cave as a tourist destination. Other famous 19th-century visitors included author Jules Verne; poets William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson; and Romantic artist J. M. W. Turner, who painted "Staffa, Fingal's Cave" in 1832. Queen Victoria also made the trip.

The playwright August Strindberg also set scenes from his play A Dream Play in a place called "Fingal's Grotto." Scots novelist Sir Walter Scott described Fingal's Cave as "one of the most extraordinary places I ever beheld. It exceeded, in my mind, every description I had heard of it… composed entirely of basaltic pillars as high as the roof of a cathedral, and running deep into the rock, eternally swept by a deep and swelling sea, and paved, as it were, with ruddy marble, baffles all description."

Artist Matthew Barney used the cave along with the Giant's Causeway for the opening and closing scenes of his art film, Cremaster 3. In 2008, the video artist Richard Ashrowan spent several days recording the interior of Fingal's Cave for an exhibition at the Foksal Gallery in Poland.

One of Pink Floyd's early songs bears this location's name. This instrumental was written for the film Zabriskie Point but not used.

Lloyd House at Caltech has a mural representing Fingal's Cave. The hallway that features this mural also houses a wooden statue named Fingal, which is among the oldest heirlooms at the institute.

Scottish Celtic rock band Wolfstone recorded an instrumental titled Fingal's Cave on their 1999 album Seven.