Scotland's Hebrides
 The firm's name refers to both the ancient spirit of the craft and to Tom's ancestry in the western archipelago of Scotland. There, on the Isle of Colonsay, Tom's three-times-great-grandfather, Duncan McNeill (1796-1883), practiced as a stonemason. He lived in a hamlet where several huge upright stones are named Fingal's Limpet Hammers. Fingal was a mythical Irish giant whose nearby cave is celebrated in Mendelssohn's "Hebridean Suite". Thousands of years old, these stones still endure in megalithic and mythic proportions in modern culture. |
