Beltane Fire Festival / Scotland

                        CODE:F-Beltane

Where : Edinburgh, Scotland  When: Every year during the night of 30th April  How Long : 1 Day

The Beltane Fire Festival is held every year during the night of 30th April on Carlton Hill in Edinburgh. An audience of around 12 thousand people comes to share the spectacular procession.

Justifiably famous for its intensity and color, the event has become a much-loved feature of the Edinburgh calendar since it was first organized in the mid-1980.

Beltane Fire Society is part of a large and important culture both in Edinburgh and the rest of the world. Organizers hope that their efforts will inspire others to get involved in celebratory works around the globe.

Edinburgh's Beltane festival traditionally takes place on the 30th of April every year on Carlton Hill.

Edinburgh's Beltane festival originates in the Scottish and Irish Gaelic pre-Christian festival of the same name.

The name itself is thought to have derived from a Gaelic-Celtic word meaning ‘bright/sacred fire'. It was held to mark and celebrate the blossoming of spring, and coincided with the ancient pastoral event of moving livestock to their summer grazing. It did not occur on any fixed solar date (the tradition of solstices and equinoxes is later in origin) but tended to be held on the first full moon after the modern 1st of May. Some sources suggest that the blooming of the Hawthorn was the primary signal for the event before the development of centralized calendars.

It was a celebration of the fertility of the land and their animals. The main traditional element which was common to all Beltane festivals was the fire which gave it its name. All the fires of the community would be extinguished and a new, sacred ‘Need Fire' was lit by either the village head or spiritual leader. From this source one or two bonfires were lit, and the animals of the community would be driven through or between them. It was believed that the smoke and flame of the fires would purify the herd, protecting them in the year to come and ensuring a good number of offspring. The inhabitants of the village would then take pieces of the fire to their homes and relight their hearths, and dance clockwise around the bonfires to ensure good portents for them and their families.

Beltane Fire Festival is an annual participatory arts event and ritual drama. It is inspired by the ancient Gaelic festival of Beltane which was historically held on an evening after May 1st and marked the beginning of summer. The modern festival was started in 1988 by a small group of enthusiasts including the musical collective Test Dept., with academic support from the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Since then the festival has grown, and as of 2006 involved over 300 voluntary collaborators and performers with the 11500 available tickets selling out.

The Beltane Fire Society, a registered charity which runs the festival, is managed by a democratically elected voluntary committee, and all the performers are volunteers who either join by word of mouth or by attending one of the advertised open meetings held early in the year. Senior performers and artists in the society help others through workshops with aspects of event production, prop construction, character performance techniques, team building, percussion skills and the health and safety considerations involved. The society has also held fundraising art and music events and has held a 'mini-Beltane' at a local AIDS Hospice, Milestone House.

It is important to remember that while the festival draws on a variety of historical, mythological and literary influences the organisers do not claim it to be anything other than a modern celebration of Beltane, evolving with its participant.

The current Beltane was started in 1988 by a small group of enthusiasts including Angus Farquhar of the musical collective Test Dept., choreographer Lindsay John, and dancers from Laban, as well as academics from the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh. The event was intended as a celebration and also a protest against the then Thatcher government's restrictions on rights to gather. Originally intended to take place on Arthur's Seat, the home of earlier Edinburgh Beltane celebrations, for practical reasons the location was moved to Carlton Hill. Choreography, iconography and performance were moulded by the originators' research into historical accounts of Beltane and their own influences (e.g. Test Department's drumming, Trinidadian carnival, and ritual dance and performance).

As a community event, each year the performance has evolved as new people bring their own influences and directions. The core narrative remains by and large the same though additional elements have been added over time for theatrical, ritual, and practical reasons. Originally an event with a core of a dozen performers and a few hundred audience, the event has grown to several hundred performers and over ten thousand audience. Key characters within the performance are maintained, though reinterpreted by their performers, and additional participants incorporated each year.

For many years the event was free and very lightly stewarded, however for several reasons (chiefly requirements declared by local authorities, the capacity limit of the hill, and the need for funding) the festival has moved to being a ticketed event.

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