Beltane

The story behind the day

Beltane, in Irish Bealtaine, is the fire festival of May Day, the first day of summer in the old Irish year. Medieval Irish texts say that druids lit two fires and drove cattle between them to protect them from disease, and bonfires and May customs lasted in Ireland and Scotland into modern times. Wiccans, Druids and other Pagans keep Beltane as a festival of fertility and fire on the eve of 1 May or on the day itself. The modern Pagan Beltane and the Edinburgh fire festival are twentieth-century revivals rather than unbroken survivals.^[1–9]

Origins

Bealtaine is the Irish name for May Day and for the time of the beginning of summer, and in the old year it opened the summer half, as Samain opened the winter half. A medieval saga, the Wooing of Emer, preserves a gloss that explains the word as a goodly, auspicious fire: two fires which the druids made with great incantations, and between which the cattle were sent against the diseases of each year. Cormac's Glossary, an early Irish word list, says much the same in Old Irish, and it links the name to Bil, a god, so that Beltine is the fire of Bil or Bel.^{[1–2, 10–12]}

What it marks

Beltane marked the beginning of summer. The fires were a rite of protection: the saga says the cattle were driven between them against disease, and the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable describes the festival as marked by bonfires kindled on the hills.^{[1–2, 9]}

How it came to be

The seventeenth-century historian Geoffrey Keating explained the name Bealltaine as the fire of Béil. In Scotland the custom of the Beltane fire was already shrinking in the late eighteenth century, and the Beltane Fire Society records that towns and villages slowly abandoned it in the nineteenth century, although Alexander Carmichael believed the need-fire lasted in the Highlands into the early nineteenth. The Edinburgh Beltane Fire Festival was created on Calton Hill in 1988, drawing on existing folk traditions, and it is a modern revival rather than an unbroken ritual.^{[3–4, 13]}

How it is kept

Calton Hill fire festivalIllustration · AI-generated

Bonfires on the eve of May remained a part of Irish and Scottish custom, and modern Pagans have taken up the fire. Wiccans mark Beltane as a Greater Sabbat, a festival of fertility and of the union of Goddess and God, and Druids speak of fertility, vitality and livestock passed between two fires. The Encyclopedia of Religion describes the Druid festival as a time when flowers open and farm animals are born.^{[5–6, 9]}

Across traditions

The modern Pagan festival draws on the older Irish and Scottish one but is a separate development. The cycle of eight festivals dates from the mid twentieth century, and Gerald Gardner is said to have adapted eight older pagan festivals into the sabbats of Wicca. The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids and the Druid Network give 1 May, while the Encyclopedia of Religion's list of Wiccan sabbats gives 30 April.^[7–8]

Sources

Each statement above was checked against published sources; the verdict says whether it stood as written, was corrected or was hedged.