Beltane, BELTEIN, or BEALTAINN, the name of a heathen festival once common to all the Celtic nations, and traces of which have survived to the present day. The name is derived from tin or teine, fire, and beal; Beil is understood to be the name of a god not directly connected with the Asiatic Belus, but a deity of light peculiar to the Celts, appearing as Belinus in Ausonius, Tertullian, and numerous inscriptions. The great festival of this worship among the Celtic nations was held in the beginning of May, but there seems to have been a somewhat similar observance in the beginning of November—the beginning and the end of summer. On such occasions, all the fires in the district were extinguished; the needfire was then kindled with great solemnity, and from this sacrificial fire the domestic hearths were rekindled.
The earliest mention of the beltane is found in Cormac, Archbishop of Cashel in the beginning of the 10th century. Two fires were lighted side by side, and to pass unhurt between them was wholesome for men and cattle. Traces of this usage existed in the Scottish Highlands even in the 19th century, and it is more than probable that the leaping through the flames which was then practised was a survival of a time when sacrifices of animals and even of human beings were thus offered. At Carnac, in Brittany, and in the Irish South Isles of Aran to the present day, the domestic animals are driven through the flames, and thus obtain immunity from accident and disease throughout the year.
Some scholars have striven to identify the worship of the Celtic Beal with that of the Baal or Bel of the Phoenicians and other Semitic nations. It is unnecessary, however, to go beyond the family of nations to which the Celts belong in order to find analogies either for the name or the thing. Grimm identifies the Celtic Beal not only with the Slavonic Belbog or Bjelbog (bel or bjel, 'white,' bog, 'a god'), but also with the Scandinavian and Teutonic Balder or Paltar, whose name appears under the form of Baldag ('the white or bright day'), and who appears to have been also extensively worshipped under the name of Phol or Pol. The universality all over Europe in heathen times of the worship of these personifications of the sun and of light through the kindling of fires and other rites, still finds a survival in the periodical lighting of bonfires. The more marked turning-points of the seasons would naturally determine the times of these festivals. The two solstices at midwinter and midsummer, and the beginning and end of summer, would be among the chief seasons. The periods of observance, which varied, no doubt, originally, more or less in different places, were still further disturbed by the introduction of Christianity. Unable to extirpate these rites, the church sought to Christianise them by associating them with rites of her own, and for this purpose either appointed a church-festival at the time of the heathen one, or endeavoured to shift the time of the heathen observance to that of an already fixed church-festival. All over the south of Germany, the great bonfire celebration was held at midsummer (Johannisfeuer), a relic, probably, of the sun-festival of the summer solstice: throughout the north of Germany, it was held at Easter. It is probable that this fire-festival (Osterfeuer) of Ostara—a principal deity among the Saxons and Angles—had been originally held on the 1st of
May, and was shifted so as to coincide with the church-festival now known as Easter.
In Great Britain, St John's Eve was celebrated with bonfires; and Easter had its fire-rites, which, although incorporated in the service of the Roman Catholic Church, were clearly of heathen origin. But the great day for bonfires in the British islands was the 1st of November. Fewer traces of this are found in other countries, and therefore we must look upon it as more peculiarly Celtic.