Staffa

Staffa

The phenomenal success of the works of Ossian, supposedly a poet of the early Dark Ages, translations of whose alleged works were published by the Scottish poet James Macpherson in the 1760’s, is hard to comprehend in retrospect. Though Macpherson was denounced as a forger by Samuel Johnson, the works inspired, among others, Napoleon, Diderot, Ingres, Jefferson, Scott, Goethe, and of course Mendelssohn, whose Hebrides Overture is popularly known as Fingal’s Cave.

Fingal's Cave

I suppose the magic of the cave would be enhanced by an even greyer, mistier atmosphere and stormier seas than those we encountered, though in such case I should probably have been too sick to appreciate it. As it was, we perhaps got our best view of the cave from the sea, since although we made our way along the rocky causeway to its mouth, the ground at the entrance was under repair and it was quite hard to get a good view into the interior. I was however pleased to see my first rock pipit.

Puffin

Considerably easier to see are the puffins, whose colony is along the coast in the opposite direction from the landing stage. It seems the presence of human visitors reassures the puffins that they can land in front of their burrows without being in danger from skuas or other predators, so if you wait there they simply come to you. 

Similarly unconcerned by visitors was a trio of black guillemots, a third new species to me in a single visit.

Fortunately we arrived early. A couple of other boatloads were disgorged from tourist craft a little later, and like all such fascinating wild places, the wonder of Staffa’s wilderness is a fragile mental construct that is always in danger of being dispelled by excessive numbers of one’s own species.

But not this time. It was marvellous!