Patti M. Walsh

Bealtaine Celebrates Fire, Fertility,
Festivities, and Faeries

Bealtaine, the Gaelic May Day festival, celebrates the powerful Sun, the fertile Earth, new life, and the official start of summer.

Celebrated about halfway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, it is one of the four cross-quarter days and one of the eight seasonal celebrations of the Celtic Wheel of the Year. The Irish call it Lá Bealtaine.

The four quarters of the Wheel of the Year align with the solstices and equinoxes. They are:

• Yule—Winter solstice
• Ostara—Spring equinox
• Litha—Summer solstice
• Mabon—Autumnal equinox

Cross-quarters occur at the midpoint of these quarters and signal the arrival of the next. Celebrated as fire festivals, they are:

• Imbolc, February 1—Arrival of spring
• Bealtaine, May 1—Arrival of summer
• Lughnasadh, August 1—Arrival of autumn
• Samhain, November 1—Arrival of winter

In Celtic culture, a new day started at sunset, not midnight. Halloween is celebrated on the eve of November 1, and the traditional bonfires and other traditions of Bealtaine commenced on April 30.

Fire

The word Bealtaine comes from Bel, the Celtic God of the Sun, fire, and healing, and the Old Irish word tene, meaning “fire.” Bel’s name means bright one or shining one, and his holiday literally means Bel’s Fire.

Sir James George Frazer (1854–1941), Scottish folklorist and social anthropologist, is probably best known for his seminal book, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. It is a wide-ranging, comparative study of mythology and religion.

According to Frazer, fire rituals were an imitative or sympathetic magic that mimicked the Sun and destroyed harmful influences.

In one of the first historical records of Bealtaine, Cormac mac Cuilennáin, king of Munster and bishop of Cashel (837–908 AD), described the festival as a time when cattle were driven between two bonfires as a means of protecting them from disease before they were led into summer pastures.

Believing in the magical and protective powers of flames, smoke, and ash, people would jump over, move through, or dance around the fire, sprinkling themselves, their crops, and their livestock with bonfire ashes.

Household fires were doused and re-lit from the Bealtaine bonfire. Farmers would lead a procession around their farms, stopping at the four cardinal points, to purify land and livestock and encourage fertility.

Fertility

Along with bonfires, Bealtaine is known for sex—lots of sex, and especially lots of outdoors sex.

In celebration of Earth’s peak fertility season, couples were encouraged to go “A-Maying.” By spending the night together in the woods or fields, they would reenact the ritual marriage between the Green Man (i.e., the Sun) and the May Queen (i.e., the Earth).

A woman who bathed with Bealtaine dew would enjoy beauty, sexual attractiveness, and youthfulness. A man who washed his face with soap and dew on Bealtaine would grow long whiskers.

Like its opposite fire festival of Samhain, Bealtaine is a time when the veil between the human and spirit worlds is at its thinnest. Instead of the deceased joining the living as they do on Samhain, however, unborn souls eagerly join the living during Bealtaine.

Arriving nine months later, Bealtaine babies were an accepted and blessed tradition.

Flowers

While yellow, orange, and gold flowers reflect Bel’s sunshine, it is the magical hawthorn that is considered the gateway between the human and spirit worlds. Its blooming coincides with Bealtaine.

In the spring, the plant blooms with a profusion of small white flowers. Traditionally considered sensual, prolific, and suggestive of female anatomy, the stamens have bright pink heads. A bride would carry a sprig of flowering hawthorn to symbolize her readiness for a fruitful union.

In summer, each hawthorn flower produces a fruit called a “haw.” The tree also has thorns, hence the name, haw-thorn. In autumn, the haws turn bright red, resembling little apples. Thus, the tree becomes a banquet for the birds.

Birds were known to carry messages to the Spirit World, so a tree that fed them was sacred. 

Because of its spiritual and sexual nature, the hawthorn was the natural gathering place for celebration, including women dancing around it.

Unlike the more commonly-known European Maypole, in which a pole with ribbons attached to it was placed in a field and dancers wove the ribbons into a specific pattern, the Bealtaine Maypole was really a May Bush or May Bough.

A small tree or branch—hawthorn, rowan, holly, or sycamore—was decorated with flowers, ribbons, eggshells, and candles, either where it stood outside or placed inside a house.

The oldest person of the house was responsible for decorating it with flower crowns and branches of blooms. Doors, windows, and the cattle themselves would be decorated with yellow flowers. Celebrants also might weave flowers into their hair, or wear a floral headpiece.

May Day was also a day when rents were due, soil tilling was completed, and turf cutting begun. Animal husbandry procedures, like breeding and castration, were done around Bealtaine.

Festivities

As spring time festival of optimism, perhaps associated with the waxing power of the Sun, there were many rituals to protect crops, dairy products, and people.

The Celts feasted on bonfire-roasted lamb and other livestock. Oatcakes on Beltaine morning guaranteed an abundance of crops and livestock. And warm caudle, an eggnog-like custard made from eggs, butter, oatmeal, and milk, was shared with predators and faeries to prevent harming their livestock.

Faeries

The Celts believed that Bealtaine and Samhain were two junctures when the veils between the human and otherworld were at their thinnest. This allowed faeries, ancestors, and unborn babies to roam freely between them.

While contemporary lore portrays faeries as playful beings, they were dangerous elementals to the ancient Celts. Fairies were thought to be jealous of human abundance, and the goal of many Bealtaine rituals, in fact, was to appease them.

Bealtaine, then, is a time to protect yourself, face the sun, and celebrate life with this traditional blessing:

May your fires burn bright.
May your joy bloom.
May your spirit be protected.
Until next time, blessed be!