Bealtaine, or Beltane: Festival of Fire and Flowers

I have been really overwhelmed trying to write about Bealtaine, which marks the start of Summer in the Celtic calender. There is just so much.... reading about the traditions and Goddesses associated with the festival has caused me to bring down from the attic my old books on Celtic Mythology and Folklore. It's really been like re-opening an Aladdin’s cave... a magical place I lived in most of the time during the 12 years I lived in Ireland, but had almost forgotten about for ages since then. It's been amazing, and very inspiring to rediscover it all... I've started working again on a series of paintings and drawings of Celtic Goddesses which I started about 10 years ago. I am going to feature some of them on the blog during this month. I realise there is just waaaaay too much stuff to include in one post, so I am going to spread it out over all my posts this month. This seems really appropriate as the month of May itself is called Beltaine in Irish and the festival is celebrated on the 15th of the month in Scotland.... so I am going to just have a whole month of Beltaine... yyaaaayyyy! what fun!

 I am in the habit of using the Irish spelling... Beltaine, instead of the English spelling... Beltane,  which is in the blog-title, so I'm just going to stick to Beltaine, I hope nobody minds! Other Spellings are: Belltaine, Bealtaine, Beltain, Beltine, and Bealteine... the Scottish Gaelic spelling is Bealltuin and the Manx (Island of Man) spelling is Boaldyn. I think it is cool when a word is sooooo old that it gets to be spelled a huge amount of different ways!

Beltaine was a very important festival. It marked the start of Summer and  was the time of the year when the Celtic people left their winter homes in  sheltered valleys to follow their cattle to summer pastures on the hills and mountainsides. This was a magical time of the year...with longer hours of sunshine, warmer weather, an abundance of new life and the blooming of the hawthorn and countless wild flowers. Hawthorn boughs and posies of wild flowers were gathered and used to decorate homes. Great fires were lit and the cattle were driven between two fires to purify them. The Beltaine fires were very important to the Celts: 

When the Druids and their successors raised the Beltaine fires on hilltops throughout the British Isles on May Eve, they were performing a real act of magic, for the fires were lit in order to bring the sun’s light down to earth. In Scotland, every fire in the household was extinguished, and the great fires were lit from the need-fire which was kindled by 3 times 3 men using wood from the nine sacred trees. When the wood burst into flames, it proclaimed the triumph of the light over the dark half of the year. (http://www.chalicecentre.net/beltaine.htm)

                                             

 The making of Beltaine cakes or Bannocks is a very common Beltaine tradition. The cake would be divided up and one piece marked with charcoal. The unlucky person who received the piece with the black mark would be the Beltaine Carline, or hag and was symbolically sacrificed. Some would attempt to throw them onto the fire and the others would prevent this. This person would then be referred to as being dead for the rest of the night. (Probably not the funnest night in the year for them I would imagine!!!) This tradition sounds pretty dire, but it was really done to symbolise the death of the hag of Winter and the triumph of Summer which had finally returned. Yyyyyyaaaaaaaaayyy!!!!

And there is more..... I am going to be doing posts on Celtic Goddesses  associated with this festival over the coming weeks as well as exploring more of the rich tradition surrounding the festival.