Mull of Kintyre
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- For the song by Paul McCartney and Wings, see Mull of Kintyre (song).
The Mull of Kintyre is the most southwesterly section of the long Kintyre Peninsula in southwestern Scotland. The name is an Anglicization of the Gaelic Maol Chinn Tìre (pronounced [mɯːlˠ̪ çiɲˈtʲiːɾʲə]). The area is home to an historic lighthouse and has been immortalised into the popular consciousness by the hit 1977 song "Mull of Kintyre" by Kintyre resident Paul McCartney's band of the time, Wings.
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[edit] Geography
Both Ailsa Craig and the north coast of Ireland are visible from the Mull. The Straits of Moyle (part of the North Channel) allow sea passage from the Irish Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. At the closest point, Ireland is 20 km (twelve miles) across the Straits.
The steep sides rising out of the sea on all sides has made the area a hazard to flight. The remains of a number of Second World War planes litter the area.
[edit] History
The Mull has been an important landbridge throughout history. It is thought that it was used by early man in their travels from continental Europe to Ireland. In more recent times it was used again by the Scotti when they travelled from Ireland to establish the kingdom of Dál Riata in modern-day Argyll.
The area has been the site of many air crashes throughout its history; one of the most notorious was the Chinook crash on Mull of Kintyre, June 2, 1994.
[edit] The Lighthouse
Mull of Kintyre Lighthouse was the second lighthouse commissioned in Scotland by the Commissioners of the Northern Lights. It was designed and built by Thomas Smith and completed in 1788. Smith had previously designed the light at Kinnaird Head but Mull of Kintyre was to be a far more substantial project in a far more remote location.
The lighthouse was rebuilt in the 1820s, changed to electrical power in 1976 and was automated in 1996. The lighthousekeeper's cottage is now run as holiday cottage by the National Trust for Scotland.
[edit] The term 'mull'
Mull, from the Gaelic Maol, is a term for a rounded hill, summit, or mountain, bare of trees (it has also been used to refer to a forehead, or a shaved head and means bald in Modern Irish). As an adjective, the word is used to indicate something which is bare, dull, or bald. In Scotland, the term is most commonly found in use in the southwest of the country, where it is often applied to headlands or promontories, and, often more specifically, for the tip of that promontory or peninsula. Other mulls include:
- The Mull of Galloway
- The Mull of Oa, a headland on Islay
- The Mull of Cara, a promontory at the south of Cara Island
- The Mull of Logan, a promontory on the Rhins of Galloway
- Mull Head, a headland on the Orkney Mainland
- Creachmhaoil in County Galway, in Ireland.
Mull, the Inner Hebridean Island's name has a different (pre-Gaelic) derivation.
[edit] Trivia
The Mull of Kintyre is used as a reference in the Mull of Kintyre test, an unofficial test for the propriety of images of naked men.
[edit] External links
- Official Kintyre Visitors Website
- Northern Lighthouse Board site on the history of Mull of Kintyre Lighthouse
- Mull of Kintyre is at coordinates Coordinates:
