Beltane
In Ireland, Éiru is considered both a goddess of Sovereignty and the centre. Éiru was the one who married the king in the inauguration rite, the “banais ríghe, that tied his fortunes to those of the land. She established the Óenach or festival at Uisneach every Beltane, Irish: Lá Bealtaine (May 1), which involved markets and games as well as more sacred events, including the lighting of twin fires on the hilltop.” Elsewhere in Irish mythology and lore, the “Tuatha de Danann arrived on Beltane (like the people of Cesair and Partholon before them), and fought their first great battle against the Fir Bolg soon after. The major, defining battle though was the Second Conflict on the Plain of Pillars. Waged against the loathsome Fomori, this war is described as occurring on Samhain.”
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Beltane is regarded as the beginning of summer, and Janet McCrickard offered an alternative view of this festival in her book ‘Eclipse of the Sun’ that “there is an obsolete Irish name for the Sun, tethin, which like the related word for fire, teine, is feminine, and both are related in turn to Scottish teth: burning, scalding, intensely hot. Teine is solar fires the word best known from Belteine, or Beltane, the famous May-day feast of the island Celts. The name is commonly and wrongly construed by modern day occultists as “the fires of Bel” a supposed sun god. Bel is however not the name of a god, but simply means “bright, white, beneficent and beautiful.” Or as cormac’s 9th century glossary puts it “goodly” it is etymologically related to Baltic balta, which carries a similar range of meanings. The Celtic festival of Beltane and the later Gaelic Christian easter to which some of its May eve rituals were transferred, included a typical sun-vigil on a high place, at which the Sun was encouraged to come out of the darkness, and grow in strength, with the help of a bonfire, and other lights. The culmination of the vigil was the sunrise itself, proof-positive of the rite’s efficacy.”
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The Celts thought that fire had been brought by a sacred bird - “the wren, who was scorched red by the encounter, or more usually the swallow, whose red face markings and forked tail were the result of the sun’s fires. Or the swift who was burnt altogether black by the fiery goddess. The Celts were one of those cultures that recognised the importance of the Sun. They had many deities with solar attributes and celebrations marking the significant times of the Sun cycle. At the Beltane Festival (Beltane means “bright fire”, referring to the Sun) the return of the summer is still celebrated today. Great bonfires, sometimes with sweet smelling Juniper, are built to achieve purification and rejuvenation.”
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The Celtic hag goddess Cailleach, whose name means “the veiled one” is considered to be the daughter of Grainne, or the winter sun. The old Celtic calendar had two suns, ‘the big sun’, which shone from Beltane to Samhain, and ‘the little sun’, which shone from Samhain to Beltane eve. In many cultures of Northern Europe the sun was often connected with horses, either thorough pulling the chariot of the sun, or being ridden by the sun deities. In Ireland “horses were revered as being able to travel between the two worlds. They opened the gates of life at Beltane, and carried the souls of her dead back to the Underworld, at Samhain.”
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Many flowers were associated with Beltane, flowering branches of broom decorated houses, and folklore has it that sitting under hawthorns on Beltane eve and anytime between them and midsummer, was said to result in enchantment or being fetched away by the faeries. Bathing in the dew from hawthorn blossoms on Beltane was also said to assure the seeker of perpetual beauty, while ship mast spindles and spinning wheels were traditionally made and cut from rowan wood between Bealtaine and midsummer. Garlands of marigolds, also known as the “Beltane shrub” were “placed around cow’s necks; wells were “milked” with skimmers to gather the first water of May; special dishes like syllabub (fresh milk and whiskey) were concocted. The Irish celebrated, but an undercurrent of caution ran through Beltane, for cattle are most at risk of disease in springtime. An ancient Gaelic blessing asked protection for “all kine and crops, all flocks and corn, from Bealtaine eve to Samhain eve, from sea to sea and every river mouth, from wave to wave, and base of waterfall.” The twin Beltane fires were believed to have a prophylactic effect, so cattle were driven between them with prayers for their safety. In Scotland witches “had a machinery of charms, incantations, red, black, and blue threads, magic caps, and particularly a magic staff, called ‘an luirgean’ ‘an lorg ohn.’ There were certain nights of the year on which they were unusually busy. These were particularly the last night of every quarter. On Beltane night they were awake all night. Their object seems to have been to sain, i.e. keep evil away from, their own cattle or those of the farmers who employed them for the purpose.”
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The night before Beltane was also an important night. “It was a night of revelry and the greenwood marriage, when couples re-enacted the joining of the god and goddess to bring fertility to the land. These spring rites later became outlawed by the church, which tried to reestablish them as May Day celebrations with a virginal May Queen. All the previous folk customs of the hawthorn were reverse and discredited. Marriages took place at this time and the bride and groom would carry or wear May blossom. Garlands of mayflowers would be hung around the bed for fertility and lasting love.”
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“Over the years stories centred on May Day have conveyed this as a time when the boundary between the human world and the otherworld became thin, our reality and the other one blended, and then mysterious things happened, for good or ill. Several Welsh and Irish folk tales describe a lake with an island in it that only exists on May Day. On that morning a door appears in a large rock beside a lake, and those who are brave enough to enter follow a passage under the water to the island a which remains invisible to anyone on shore. Visitors discover that the island is inhabited by a kind of fairy people of exquisite beauty, but inevitably one May Day, a visitor puts a flower in his pocket before leaving the island, and from that day on the magic door is never to be seen. In other tales, a long dead princess or king appears as a vision on May Day near his former castle.”
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“For centuries, the old Celtic festival of Beltaine continued to be celebrated as May Day, associated with boughs and fresh spring flowers, fiddle music and dances, a May queen and sometimes a maypole… while in the “Germanic tradition, Walpurgis Night, on April 30th, is a moon festival sacred to the goddess Freya, "Walpurga" being one of her names. The re-dedication of the holiday to "St. Walpurga" was a later Christian addition. Freya is generally known today as the goddess of love and beauty in Norse mythology (as opposed to Freja, goddess of marriage and family), but she was more complex and more interesting than that: not a virgin maiden but a figure representing women's magic, sexuality, and independence -- as well as, in her dark aspect, a patron deity of war and death in battle. She wears a cloak of falcon feathers and the magical gold necklace called Brísingamen, and rides in a chariot pulled by cats, the sacred boar Hildisvíni at her side. Maypole dancing comes down to us from the rites of spring dedicated to Freya, although the pole was originally a living tree representing Yggdrasill, the enormous ash tree that is the great "world tree" of Norse cosmology.”
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Sources:
Celtic mythology Encyclopaedia by Patrica Monaghan
Many Gods by Robin Herne
Eclipse of the Sun by Janet McCrickard
Children into Swans by Jan Beveridge
Terri Windling: https://www.terriwindling.com/blog/2015/05/beltane.html
