Beltane
One of the four cross-quarter days (Beltane, Lughnasadh, Samhain and Imbolc). Samhain marks the beginning of winter, Beltane the beginning of summer. These were the hinge days of the year for our ancestors, they marked periods of change that had huge consequences for the survival and prosperity for themselves and their community. The rituals and stories they used were the ways that they understood and navigated these times.
As with much that has been lost to the mists of time, there are a few possible explanations for the name of the festival, Beltane. The end of the word derives from the Gaelic word teine meaning fire, that bit is not in doubt.
The first part could be the god of a pan-Celtic cult called Belenus. Belenus was a sun god, the root of belo means bright or shining, so Beltane = bright fire. Or it may be from bil-tene, Gaelic for ‘lucky fire’ which was first recorded in the 10th century in a book called Sanas Cormaic (Cormac’s Glossary), or it may be from bile which is a term for a sacred tree.
Belenus is often seen as a strong candidate, appearing at many sites across Europe. Even more interesting is that the Romans got hold of Belenus and through a process called (with their usual reserve and understatement) interpretatio romana mapped him onto their god, Apollo, also associated with light and healing springs.
It might seem slightly contradictory, a deity associated with fire and water, but in Celtic thought, fire and water aren’t opposites, they are two sides of the same coin, both purify, heal and protect, both marking the thresholds between the ordinary world and the other world. Beltane dew, gathered at dawn, was believed to have healing powers. The fire on the hill and the dew on the ground are the same idea in different forms.
It’s impossible to tell which explanation is true, it may be partly all of them, and it’s also possible that the festival itself predates any name it was given.
Beltane and Samhain are the hinges of the year, the days on which the world turns and certainly the most important of the festivals, marking the two halves of the year, the light and the dark.
Both of these festivals have fire at their heart, and both follow similar rituals of extinguishing all fires in the villages, then lighting a huge communal bonfire and relighting everyone’s fires from the one communal fire, a symbol of rebirth and cleansing, but also community.
At Beltane, sometimes they used to light two fires side by side and drive their cattle through to purify and protect the animals. The festival was also associated with luck and fertility, couples would jump over the fire symbolising their partnership or betrothal.
The fertility at the heart of Beltane is symbolised by feminine and masculine figures, the land itself in bloom, sovereign and feminine, and the wild force that drives growth, later formalised as the May Queen and the Green Man, though at Beltane they predate both names.
Away from the fire, farmers used to walk around the boundaries of their land, east first, then south, west and north, carrying seeds, farming tools, fresh well water, and protective herbs like vervain or rowan. Yellow flowers were placed in doorways and window sills for protection.
It’s difficult to understand now, but this was not just symbolic, it was magic in a practical sense, these rituals protected the land as they understood it.
So, what were they protecting against? Well, much as at Samhain, the veil between the worlds thinned, but this time, instead of inviting the old gods and ancestors in, the people were keeping the Fae out. This was a time of abundance and growth that they could ill afford to share.
There’s a line from County Kerry in the National Folklore Collection:
‘Guard the house with a string of primroses on the first three days of May. The fairies are said not to be able to pass over or under this string.’
It’s not that the Fae are evil, but they respond to the environment, at Samhain the veil opens on to darkness and scarcity, at Beltane, onto light and abundance. In May, the Fae were believed to steal the butter and milk, so farmers also rubbed cows’ udders with primrose, and rowan crosses were tied to cattle on the Isle of Man.
What happened to Beltane? What caused its power and importance to slip away from us? Well, it did not entirely, although Christianity changed the way of life in the British Isles and consumed or changed the pre-Christian festivals, the need for rituals and ceremonies remained and they reappeared in different forms.
May Day arrived in medieval times through the Roman festival Floralia and shares a lot of Beltane’s DNA; fertility, renewal and community, but without the fire rituals and mythology. The May Queen is the goddess figure of Beltane, but softened and deemed unthreatening, moved to pageantry instead of ritual and deity.
The Green Man is an enduring symbol of pre-Christian mythology that it seems the church were not able to suppress, he can be found in the stonework of medieval churches, he was too deeply rooted in the imagination.
Morris dancing, although seen as quaint in 21st century Britain, was an important part of the May Day celebrations, the bells driving off bad spirits and the stick clashing symbolising the defeat of winter. It evolved through competition between villages, but the impulse was the same as walking the cows between the fires, or laying yellow flowers at the threshold: functional magic, the protection and renewal of the community.
Terry Pratchett understood the power of ritual and ceremony, in his book Reaper Man he has the Dark Morris (Samhain) and the Light Morris (Beltane), he says there is a cosmological rule, you have to dance both, otherwise you can’t dance either.
Winter needs summer and summer needs winter and both need our participation to bring them in.