The Gaelic May Day, marking the start of summer, held on 1 May or about midway between the spring equinox and the summer solstice. Of the four quarter days it is the best documented: it is described in Sanas Cormaic, a glossary written about 900, with the cattle and the two fires already in place.
What people did
The two fires, and the cattle between them Sanas Cormaic says the druids lit two fires with great incantations and drove cattle between them to protect them from disease. Cattle were still driven over flames or between two fires in parts of Ireland and Scotland in the 19th century, a thousand years after that glossary described it.
Every hearth relit Household fires were doused and then relit from the Bealtaine bonfire, generally lit on a hill. People daubed themselves with its ashes and sprinkled them over crops and livestock, and carried burning torches home around the house and the farm.
Yellow flowers at the door Doors, windows, byres and cattle were decked with yellow May flowers — primrose, rowan, hawthorn, gorse, hazel, marsh marigold — perhaps because they look like fire. The Irish for the first of May, Lá Buí Bealtaine, is the yellow day of Bealtaine.
The May Bush A thorn bush or branch decorated with flowers, ribbons, bright shells and rushlights, usually dressed by the oldest person in the house and kept until 31 May. In Dublin and Belfast whole neighbourhoods decorated one, and rival streets tried to steal each other's, which is why the Victorians banned it.
The May dew Dew gathered on Bealtaine morning was thought to bring beauty, luck and health. Before sunrise young women rolled in it or washed their faces with it; it was collected in a jar, left in the sun and filtered, and was said to keep the skin young for the year.
Keeping the aos sí sweet The fairies were held to be abroad at Bealtaine as at Samhain, and much of the ritual was about appeasing them. Holy wells were visited, and the fires' flames, smoke and ashes were believed to guard against sickness, supernatural harm and witchcraft.
The great fire at Uisneach, and how sure we are of it
The 17th-century historian Geoffrey Keating describes a great Bealtaine gathering at the hill of Uisneach, with a sacrifice to a god called Beil and two fires lit in every district of Ireland. There is no such gathering in the annals, and Ronald Hutton warns that Keating may have merged a legend with Sanas Cormaic to make a piece of pseudo-history. What is certain is the ground itself: excavations at Uisneach found large fires and charred bone, and a place of ritual since ancient times.
Quick answersWhat is Bealtaine?
The Gaelic May Day festival, on 1 May, marking the start of summer. It was kept in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man with bonfires, cattle driven between two fires for protection, yellow flowers at the doors and the gathering of May dew.
Why were cattle driven between two fires at Bealtaine?
To protect them from disease. Sanas Cormaic, written about 900, says the druids lit two fires with great incantations and drove the cattle between them, and the practice was still recorded in parts of Ireland in the 19th century.
What is a May Bush?
A thorn bush or branch decorated with flowers, ribbons, shells and rushlights, kept from May Day until the end of the month. It was popular in parts of Ireland until the late 19th century, and in Dublin and Belfast neighbours competed over whose was best.