The recent closure of Holyhead at Christmas resulted in a rerouted trip to Scotland, with the added bonus for me of seeing and photographing Ailsa Craig. Whenever Ailsa Craig comes up, I always tell people about this great folktale from the book The Fabled Coast.
Tickling a giantess
Ailsa Craig is a towering volcanic rock in the Firth of Clyde, rising 1,114 foot above sea level. Like other isolated sea-crags, it was said to have been dropped in place by the Devil, or, in a more detailed and dirtier legend, by the Cailleach, an ancient Gaelic goddess. The Cailleach of Arran liked to eat sailors, and to catch them she would stand astride Loch Fyne, legs wide apart, her great left foot planted in Carrick on Bute, and her great right foot more than thirty miles away on Kilmorey, Knapdale. Whenever a ship tried to pass she would drop stones on them to sink them, and then pick the men out of the water and pop them in her mouth.
One day a French captain wanted to sail that way, and saw her waiting with an immense rock to drop on his ship. Being an artful fellow, 'by a very adroit handling of his mizzen-mast he tickled her in the obvious place that you would expect a Frenchman to tickle a woman.' The Cailleach screeched and dropped the rock, and that was Ailsa Craig.
The story was recorded in 1962 from Alexander Archibald, a Prestwick policeman, who in turn had heard it from a Ballantrae fisherman. It was not a unique idea that somebody could escape from a giantess by tickling her, although tales including this motif are not generally so precise about which bit of the giantess gets tickled.