The Yellow Days of Belton - May Day in Galloway

Belton is a regional expression of May Day, celebrating our local goddess of dawn and renewal who overcomes the Carline Queen to restore rulership from the dark to light half of the year.

Since the middle of the 20th century, awareness of Celtic festivals has increased exponentially. With every year that passes, May Day celebrations are becoming more recognizable under the name Beltane. The internet is replete with discussions, modern rituals, and merchandise to sate the ravenous curiosity of the reader. Wonderful as such recognition is, few understand the local origins and purpose of May Day, its mythic roots and spiritual import.

Having been revived among the “the Wheel of the Year” rituals of Wicca, and from there finding its way into the ever-expanding modern Pagan revival, it has become divorced from its originating culture. Among the rampant speculations and reinterpretations, more theory about the festival abounds than what was hitherto the expression of it among the local peoples who traditionally perpetuated it. Certainly, it has foundations in the prehistoric Celtic tribes and survived as a community event well into the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but the copious record of authentic material has become sublimated under conjecture and reinvention.

The challenge that hinders those who seek to discover the authentic practices revolving around the May Day festival is the sources which have become most relied upon are from scattered geographies and lack context. Intermittent records stretch from Ireland to the Highlands and Isles of Scotland; some are literary sources like Cormac’s Glossary, while others are the ambling collections of curious Antiquarians and Victorian travel writers.

In our modern mindset we can too often think of Celtic culture as national – Scots, Irish, Cornish, Welsh or Breton. The truth is that culture is local and not necessarily national, it varies from region to region maintaining themes but presenting forms uniquely relevant to the people inhabiting a certain area. A researcher must localize their inquiry while remaining cognizant of the broader source material. To that end, in this this article I will focus on my home region of Galloway in the South-West of Scotland, looking also to the Isle of Man and, to some extent, Dumfriesshire - areas of which are anciently connected by the Solway and in many respects, reflect one another.

Man and Galloway have always shared a special relationship in history and culture which is often overlooked but offers a wonderful avenue for Gallovidian research. Manx records of May Day festivities are incredibly well preserved and much of the practices once found in Galloway were also employed in the Isle of Man. What one has lost the other may preserve.

What’s in a Name

‘Beltane’ is the most common anglicization of the name of the May Day festival, originating in the early Gaelic Beltene. In Galloway, it was called Belton and in the Isle of Man, Boaldyn. The question which must be asked is – what does this name mean? The earliest source we have is Cormac’s glossary, which was essentially a poetic glossary. In the art of Gaelic poetry, glosses are a device employed to lend depth to the imagery painted by the words, so it draws from homonyms, both mythic and linguistic, rather than being a definition or scientific exploration of the origin of words. However, this text is usually erroneously treated by researchers as an etymological text. Cormac’s Glossary has two entries relating to the name Belltaine, the first states:

Belltaine ‘May-Day’ i.e., bil-tene i.e., lucky fire, i.e., two fires which Druids used to make with great incantations, and they used to bring the cattle [as a safeguard] against the diseases of each year to those fires [in marg.] they used to drive the cattle between them. [1]

There is no contention that -tene means fire, but the first element in the word bel- or bil- has been the source of multiple interpretations. Even in Cormac’s Glossary there is an alternative to the meaning of lucky, and it is given thus:

Bil from Bial i.e., an idol god, under beltine ‘May Day’ i.e., fire of Bel. [1]

Here we have a religious imagery associated with the name, and this one simple entry has become the favoured interpretation since the earliest speculations of Antiquarians and has filtered down into Academia, but there is much to discredit it.

Antiquarians had a very heliocentric ideal of pre-Christian religion, interpreting many surviving rites and customs through the lens of ‘Sun worship’. They also saw things through a Biblical perspective and soon identified Bial with the Phoenician deity Baal, creating an artificial Celtic version of a god named Bel. Irish literature does contain a shadowy figure called Bile (meaning tree or branch) but nowhere is this figure associated with the festival of Belltaine. Academia was also happy to associate this conceived deity Bel as represented by the old Celtic deity of war Belinos, but this association stands on a shaky etymological theory. We know from Welsh personal names that the -in in Belinos is retained in the name Belyn, and that the personal name Beli also does not have the solar connotations claimed for the artificial Bel, rather meaning ‘one who strikes.’

This knowledge brings this religious interpretation into question. It offers no evidence of the fires being in any way dedicated to a deity named Bial. It is more likely a poetic gloss designed to serve the evangelical mission of Irish Christianity, a warning against indulging in the festival in its original pagan form. The fact that Cormac’s Glossary provides an alternative origin in its entry for Belltaine itself indicates that the prevalent concept in Ireland was not one of a deity, but an expression of the rites of the festival itself.

This Manx word Beeal appears in Scots Gaelic as Beul: a mouth, from O. Irish Bél: a lip. This is also the origin of the Scots Gaelic Bil: a lip, margin; a rim, brim, edge. These words are likely related to the Er. Irish Belach: a pass or gap, and cognate with the Manx Beeal: mouth, muzzle, rictus, flue, outlet, orifice, cone, crater, rim, approach, passage. Ultimately these words descend from the Old Celtic Bili- or Bilio- (margin, rim, or edge). Therefore, the likely origin of the name Beltene is passage (bél) through fire (tene) in complete accord with the rite described in the original Belltaine entry of Cormac’s Glossary.

Here we see that the name of the festival is simply a description of the central rite performed at that time of year, the passage of stock, children of the family etc. through the sacred fire as a spiritually protective act.

'Tis the Season

Belton was a community festival celebrating a seasonal change. It was essentially a rural and agricultural series of rites and events. The Gaels, while recognizing the various seasons in a year, broadly divided it into two halves, summer and winter or the dark and light potions of the year. Belton is the time when the summer or light half of the year is deemed to be strong enough to exert dominance over the tyranny of the pervious dark half. An alternative name in Cormac’s Glossary for May Day is offered in a third relevant entry:

Cetsoman: [B. cetshamun] ‘Mayday’ i.e., cet-sam-sin, i.e., the first of the weather (sin) (b) of summer (sam).[1]

This term survives in the Scottish Gaelic name for the month of May An Cèitean and is related to the Welsh Cyntefin. This transition from the power of death in the winter half to the liberty of life in the summer portion of the year is the prime reason for the rites of Belton.

Today we generally accept that May Day is the 1st of May, however in local traditions that exact date is far from certain. In parts of the Isle of Man the festival was celebrated as late as the 11th and in Western Galloway, it was celebrated on the 3rd of May.

It must be remembered that the current Gregorian Calendar was preceded by the Julian and moreover that the festival originated in Celtic culture which employed its own Lunisolar calendar. We cannot be too rigid in dating these old festivals as they are apt to be interpreted regionally, religiously, or adjusted to the needs of the calendar in current use. We do know that in ancient Gaelic usage the date was chosen as the beginning of a new month, not set in the middle of any particular month in the cycle. Liminality was a sacred concept in Celtic traditions, viewed as a spiritual as well as a temporal transition from one state to another. No greater liminality could be as evident as the beginning of the month that saw in the transition of rulership from darkness to light.

Yellow Days

Belton began with the harvesting of gorse flowers (Ulex europaeus) and the making of gorse wine. The detritus of the previous winter was cleared, gorse encroaching on fields was dug out and dead trees, branches and other burnable litter was collected and allowed to dry during the preparations of the land. This collection would be the fuel for the construction of the later Belton fires.

The burning of gorse on the hills where sheep were to graze formed the first fires of the season. Gorse is thick, grows quickly and is covered in brutally spiny leaves but it renews itself well after burning. Therefore, just like crop rotation, allowing gorse to grow and burning it was a farming technique that would revitalize the soil and promote new vegetation for sheep to graze. On the Isle of Man, the burning of gorse was a central element in the ceremonies of the season and the smoke was deemed protective if it drifted over the fields, stock and crops of the farmland. It was said that when the gorse was burned it looked as if the entire Island was on fire.

On the eve of Belton children would gather May-Flowers, specifically Yellow Primroses (Primula vulgaris), Marsh Buttercups (Caltha palustris) and Gorse (Ulex europaeus). They would arrange these flowers at the doors of the houses in the village; all were symbols of light and summer. These flowers bedecking the stoops of the houses brings sense to the Scot’s Gaelic phrase, Latha Buidhe Bealltainn - The Yellow Days of Bealltainn. Folk would also make crosses from rowan and bind them with red thread as symbols of protection. Some would carry one of these talismans on their person, and some of these crosses would be hung at the entrances of byres or houses and to the tails of livestock.

Lucky Fires

While the children were out collecting May flowers, the young men would be labouring on the hill upon which the gorse had been burned. They would be preparing the sacred fires central to the rites of Belton. The oldest form was to create two fires near one another, one to the north and one to the south. First a wide enough trench needed to be dug that could contain the circumference of the fires prepared at both ends, the center of the trench would be flattened to create a ramp leading down from the west side and up to the east. This elaborate set-up became less and less prevalent over time and a single bonfire usually sufficed in many places. In some areas a large ‘altar’ of turf was constructed which would contain the fire. Sometimes it was set in a trench dug for the purpose.

In the homes, food and drink were collected and cooked for festivities. Enough would be prepared so that home fires could be extinguished that night to be rekindled the next day, often through friction. No fire could be shared from one house to another during this period, and in some areas, water also could not be shared, so all food preparation for the next day had to be completed before the folk would travel to the hill and the rites of the fire.

After the sun had set, the fires on the hill would be ignited and horns were blown in the four directions to let the folk know that they needed to gather with their families and parade up the hill to assemble at the west. The horn blower, the person chosen to light the fire, and the person chosen to make the offerings were all elected to those positions through the choosing of lots or for the position they held within the community.

When all were assembled there was often a short sacrificial rite wherein a piece of bread, spread over with a custard of eggs, milk and butter, was dedicated to the purpose and would be torn and pieces cast into the night so that predators would be sated and have no need to interfere with the stock on the farms. This form of this sacrifice may be gleaned by way of comparison with the Highlands wherein the speaker is reported as stating:

“This I give to thee, O Storm, that thou mayest be favourable to our corn and pastures; and this I give to thee, O Eagle, and this to thee, O Fox, that thou mayst spare our lambs and kids.” [2]

No doubt in Christian communities an invocation to God would be recited, and in more pagan influenced rites a similar traditional recitation would take place. In many cases the ritual words would be essentially pagan with a veneer of Christianity to make them respectable.

When the time arrived, the folk and their animals would pass between the fires where the smoke was deemed to bless them, spiritually protecting them and their stock. In areas where a single bonfire was employed, they would move around to pass it clockwise. The ultimate direction travelling from the west, symbolic of the past dark part of the year, toward the east, the home of the renewal of light. People would mingle with one another, sharing friendship and community bonds; drinks would be passed around and people talked about the agricultural needs of the coming season. It had a jovial and congenial spirit and celebrated the mutual dependance that the people had on one another.

As the fire died sometimes a youth was chosen to leap over it three times, his ‘spangs’ representing the exuberance and life returning to the community and the animals that populated the farms. Antiquarians liked to associate leaping over the fire directly with fertility, and to some extent it did, but it was more in a sympathetic (magic) representation of the renewal of the land and the entire community.

Blessed by May Dew

Eventually people returned to their homes to extinguish their fires and sleep, and the stock returned to their fields and byres, but this in no way was the end of Belton. As the light of the morning began to colour the skies in a ruddy hue, women would be out in the fields or on the hills collecting May dew. They did this by drawing a flannel across the grass and wringing it out into a vessel. The water of the dew was deemed to possess powers of healing and of renewal. Young women would wash their faces in it so that they might “prevent the skin from becoming wrinkled and freckled and will preserve the glow of youth.” Some others would keep this May dew to use in magical charms where health or anything else could find renewal through its restorative virtues.

In a similar vein, there are sacred wells scattered across Galloway where the ill were brought on the morning of Belton and washed in the waters to cure them of sickness. After they submerged the subject or poured the sacred waters over them, they would make an offering. This offering took the form of a coin pushed into a tree, thrown into the waters, or laid beside them. Sometimes the offering was a piece of cloth tied to a tree to cement the exchange.

May Queen's Battle

During the day of Belton, a singular ceremony took place. A young unmarried woman was selected as the May Queen and another youth as her captain under whom a troop was assembled. She was dressed in beautiful bright clothing and a wreath of May-Flowers adorned her brow. Likewise, Winter had her captain and troop. The person chosen to play Winter was a man who drably dressed as an old woman either veiled or with his face whitened with flour, both Winter and her troop were clad in warm winter clothing. The two troops approached one another in an allotted community green or field, cheery music attending the arrival of the May Queen and the clatter of tongs and cudgels preceding Winter’s host. The two troops would engage in mock battle, the mode of which sport differed from location to location.

It was considered fortunate if the May Queen’s troop were victorious, but if not then she would be ransomed back to the community for coin which was used to offset the expense of the festival. After this amusement was complete, Winter’s troop retired to a barn or house where they had their own celebration while the May Queen was enthroned, and her troop seated. A community feast would be laid out before her. Dancing and entertainment ensued during which Winter and her troop, their costumes removed, return to join in the revelries. The Feast would then follow with due ceremony and the entertainment continued well into the night.

The Carline Queen

We now come to the most important aspect of the rites of Belton, the identity of the spiritual agencies or deities which are honoured in the festival. While I entirely reject the contrived association with a male god called Bel, a rite like this is a mythic event and in that divine mystery lies the heart of what it means to celebrate Belton.

It will be noted that the May Queen is in contention with Winter, and this is the authentic truth of the mythology underpinning Belton. Both characters are representations of deities, and their battle is a mystery play bringing the spiritual ideal into the physical through its enactment. It is fine to say the time of year is transitioning, but the rationale of a ritual play is in making manifest in the real world those influences which move within the unseen realms.

We are lucky to have the published works of Scottish anthropologist Donald A. MacKenzie available, Scottish Wonder Tales from Myth and Legend.[4] In this book he records a seasonal story wherein Beira, the Old Lady of Winter, is in contention with the young and beautiful Bride. This story, while being a Western Highland tale, shares the exact themes we find in the May Day mystery play in the South-West of Scotland and the Isle of Man. The Cailleach is not hard to identify. She is the Cailleach of Scots-Gaelic. In Manx she is known as laa Caillagh ny Groamagh and in Galloway we call her the Carline Queen and the Gyre Carline. The character of Bride is a little more nebulous, but we will examine her identity a little further on in this article.

This Carline Queen rules her Carlines, hag goddesses that represent the phenomenal powers of storm, frost, snow, and other atmospheric influences. She dominates the dark half of the year and keeps the May Queen contained. When warming breezes of spring cause the flower called Snow Drops (Galanthus nivalis) to pop up in the melting of the snow, the Carline’s power begins to slip yet she remains very powerful. This is the origin of the custom in Galloway of never bringing Snow Drop blossoms into the house as they come with misfortune. From the emergence of Snow Drops and the first failings of dark days in February, until the celebrations of May, the Carline Queens dominance continues to wane.

These supernatural hag goddesses became indistinguishable from the poor victims of witch hunts, granting a supernatural grandeur to regular old women who may or may not have practiced folk magic. In many cases magical protective measure used to offer defense against ‘witches’ were not originally designed for human curses, but measures assigned to protect from the activities these atmospheric deities. The rowan cross bound in red thread and the burning of gorse are Belton examples of such protections.

Goddess of Renewal

While MacKenzie’s book opens the window to the mythic vista of the Belton festivities, the character of Bride is problematic. Sadly, it is common in the descent of tradition that many of the old goddesses are either lost or merged with one another during the process of survival in a Christian world. This happens not only in Celtic lands but across Europe.

In the Highland traditions and the Scottish Isles, a prominent place is held for St. Brigit, a canonized Christin nun from Kildare in Ireland that has been synchronized with the ancient goddess Brighid. The deity is identical with the ancient British Goddess Brigantia, a goddess of wisdom and strategy equated by the Romans with their own goddess Minerva. In MacKenzie’s story there is little in his Bride to suggest either the saintly nun of Kildare or the stately goddess Brighid/Brigantia. She is clearly a figure representing Spring, a youthful maiden who is yet to come into her own power. Her identity will not be found under the name Bride or Brighid, but in another divine character entirely. She will, in fact, reveal herself to be a nearly forgotten, though incredibly ancient, goddess of renewal.

There is a prehistoric Indo-European deity associated with both the dawn and the season of Belton in Britain. She stands at once as the goddess who renews herself every day and renews the power of the light half of the year. A goddess of the rosy light preceding the rising sun and of the warming transition from darkness into light.

In Sanskrit she is known as Ushas, to the Baltic people of Lithuania she is Ausrine, to the Greeks she is Eos the Rosy Fingered Dawn, and the Romans call her Aurora. All of these names originate in the PIE *h₂éwsōs meaning dawn. Among the Anglo-Saxons she was known as Eostre, and this brings us a little closer to our goddess of Belton.

The Venerable Bede is the source for our knowledge of the English goddess in his The Reckoning of Time:

"Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated "Paschal month", and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance." [5]

Bede states the festival of Eostre was celebrated in the month equating to April according to the Julian Calendar. He says that she lent her name to the Paschal season, namely Easter. This has led the assumption of many to assume that her festival was that of the Vernal Equinox with very little evidence in support of that conjecture beyond Christian calculations of Easter. It must be remembered that the Equinox falls in March, especially in the Julian calendar so Bede could not have had this date in mind for his festival of Eostre.

There is also no reason to think that the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons dated a festival according to a similar method to the complicated calculations consistent with the Church’s liturgical year. It is more likely that the festival of Eostre occurred at the end of her month, and therefore synonymous with May Day. It was only when Christianity become dominant that some of the pagan festivals were moved to the time that corresponded to the Church’s Paschal calculations.

We are on more certain ground when it comes to the ritualism of the festival wherein the lighting of bonfires was a central component, so much so that the Gaelic name Beltene itself reflects this central ceremonial. In his 1835 Deutsche Mythologie, philologist Jacob Grimm observes:

"The heathen Easter had much in common with May-feast and the reception of spring, particularly in the matter of bonfires." [6]

Grimm’s assertion that Easter originally has much in common with the May-feast indicates that these two festivals, one Christian and the other pre-Christian, actually represent one and the same festival in the cultural milieu of Germanic society. He also makes a very convincing case associating the festival dedicated to Eostre with May Day and that the Indo-European goddess of dawn and renewal was the central mythic character.

With this in mind, we can confidently identify the nebulous figure of Bride in MacKenzie’s tale to be representative of this goddess of renewal. Her identity among the Gaels of the Highlands and Isles would need to be the subject of a different article as we are concerned here primarily with Galloway, Man and Dumfriesshire.

A Regional Divinity

In Galloway, the goddess of dawn and renewal has been synchronized with a local saint called Madrine, to whom the Kirkmadrine churches in the Rhinns and the Machars were dedicated. In the Manx language one of the names of the dawn is madran, synonymous with the Gallovidian Madrine. Curiously, this name is not only found in the local forms of Gaelic, but also a word formerly in use among the Cymraeg speakers of Britain in the form of madryn, meaning fox. The ruddy colouring of the fox and its activities in the twilight hours of morning and evening associates it with the dawn and this animal could be seen as a poetic gloss for the goddess, and a totemic form.

If we follow the geographical trail from Man, through Galloway to Dumfriesshire we find the same goddess under the name Modron or Madrun, the mythic mother of a male deity known as Mabon. In this region we find his name connected with Lochmaben and the Clachmabenstane. It is well established that both Modron and Mabon originated in the Hen Ogledd, the Old North, which includes the regions of Dumfriesshire and Annandale. Ideas related to this group of deity names probably originally found their way to the Principality of Wales through the immigration of the Sons of Cunedda who left Manau Gododdin (north of Hadrian’s Wall and extending close to the Solway) and ejected the Irish from Wales establishing dynasties in the region.

Modron is usually claimed to derive from the Old Celtic Matrona, meaning mother, however the only Celtic indication of a goddess specifically referred to as Matrona is the eponymous deity of the Marne in France. The very widespread triple goddesses known as the Matronae, or the Mothers, have no real connection to the eponymous deity of the Marne other than in the root meaning of the epithet. These three goddesses are similar to the concepts of the Moriai, Fates or Nornes and are well attested in the Cymraeg language as the fairy-like, y Mamau who are petitioned for the blessings of fate.

In the Welsh hagiographies there is a St. Madrun (sometimes spelled Madryn), the daughter of Vortimer the Blessed and granddaughter of the infamous Vortigern. Much of Modron’s myth has been woven into this saint’s story – she flees with her son St. Ceido (like Modron losing her son Mabon to imprisonment), her handmaid is called St. Annun, just as the river Annan in Annandale is likely called after a similarly named goddess. The river Annan flows to the east of Lochmaben.

The name of St. Madrun of Wales, the granddaughter of Vortigern, does not strictly relate to the northern goddess Modron, in Romano-British her name is actually St. Materiana, which is neither related to a supposed “Dea Matrona” nor to the Cymraeg madryn. It is evident that the Latin name rendered into a Cymraeg form and served as a homonym which allowed for the grafting the older goddess onto the hagiography of the later saint.

The simplest answer is often the most likely and in the figure of Madrine/Modron we have a local version of the goddess of renewal associated with the dawn (Manx madran) and probably associated with the fox (Cymraeg madryn). Her immediate familiar associates Mabon and Annan form the basis of a former mythic cycle very prominent in the region. It is this goddess which the Belton ceremonies of the Southwest of Scotland and the Isle of Man commemorated, an ancient Celtic deity who renewed the world through bringing the light of summer to dominance by defeating the Hag goddess of Winter in an eternal cycle of liminal mystic transition.

Conclusion

By delving into local tradition as well as literary sources we can ascertain that Belton is the Gallovidian version of a festival celebrating the transition of rulership from the dark to light half of the year in the person of the Madrine, the goddess of dawn and renewal who wrestles dominance from the Carline Queen in their contention. It was celebrated as a community and agricultural festival to protect the folk of the village and the farms, especially the young, and the stock upon which the community relies. That this protection was primarily a defense against inclement weather and atmospheric hazards which might reduce the yield of crops and beasts or in worse cases tragedy among the inhabitants of the locality. It was a time not only of protection but a joyous affirmation of mutual reliance among rural people, a reaffirmation of the natural community support system. For those who still celebrate Belton, it is entirely a celebration of hope and happiness and a revelry in life itself.

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[1] Mac Cuilennáin, Cormac (d.908), Sanas Chormaic (Cormac’s Glossary), tr. and annotated by John O Donovan, LL.D., Calcutta: O. T. Cutter for the Irish Archeological and Celtic Society, 1886

[2] Train, Joseph, (1779-1852), An historical and statistical account of the Isle of Man, from the earliest times to the present date. Douglas, Man: M. A. Quiggin Isle of Man 1845 (p315)

[3]Penman, Alastair, FSA, Scott, Some Customs, Folklore and Superstitions of Galloway, Castle Douglas:The Forward Press, 1992.

[4] Mackenzie, Donald Alexander (1873-1936), Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth & London: Blackie & Son, 1917.