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Bealtaine in Irish and Scottish Place-Names

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Bealtaine in Irish and Scottish Place-Names Bealtaine in Irish and Scottish Place-names Kay Muhr Ulster Place-Name Society The term Bealtaine (older spelling Beltine), attested from the Early Irish period, appears in a small number of Irish and Scottish place-names. In Ireland there are possibly ten, most of which are names of townlands in the north (of which two are now obsolete); in the south, there is a townland in Co. Tipperary and one in Co. Cork. In Scotland, Tullybelton PER is the earliest attested of all such names. Bealtaine is used as the name of a time of year, May Day or the month of May. This day was significant both as a quarter day beginning the summer, when young animals increased in value and were taken to their summer grazing, and for the lighting of ceremonial bonfires, the ritual also known as Bealtaine.1 The term Bealtaine was common to the Gaelic-speaking area, including Man,2 while the fire ritual has parallels throughout Europe.3 This paper will study some accounts of what happened during the season of Bealtaine in Ireland and Scotland, and consider the various attempts to explain the origin of the term. This is followed by the history and topography of the place-names containing Bealtaine, in order to compare what is known of the traditions and their development with the origin of the place-names themselves. Bealtaine in the Gaelic year The Early Irish year was divided into four seasons, apparently beginning, not at the equinox or solstice, but between them. All four quarter days, counted from the night before, are mentioned in the Early Irish story of Cú Chulainn’s wooing of his wife Emer. First of all, Samhain (October 31st or Hallowe’en) and Bealtaine are explained: is dé roinn nobid foran mpliadain and .i. in samrad o beltine co samfuin 7 in gemred o samfuin co beltine. ‘there used to be two divisions of the year then, summer from May Day to Hallowe’en and winter from Hallowe’en to May Day.’4 1 Kelly 1997, 59, 534 §3. 2 Modern Irish Bealtaine and Manx Boaldyn refer to ‘the month of May’, while in Scottish Gaelic Bealltainn is ‘May Day’ while the month is now An Cèitean. 3 Studied with a huge collection of evidence by J. G. Frazer 1913, in Pt 7, Vol. 1 of the Golden Bough. 4 Tochmarc Emire (Van Hamel 1956, 32, 43); translation mine. The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 10, 2016, 89–126 90 Kay Muhr The other two quarter days follow: Imbolc, February 1st, and Lugnasad, August 1st.5 The significance of Bealtaine as the beginning of (the summer part of) the year was long remembered. Much closer to the present, James McGann of Ballymoney, Co. Antrim, gave an account in 1835 of the ‘May Eve Customs’ attributed to many of the elderly females of the parish, who, as he notes, were not all Roman Catholic. Along with protective twigs of rowan over kitchens, byres and cattle, They will not mix the milk which they may have on May eve with the milk of the following day. As they say, ‘It is unlucky to mix the milk of two years together’ (OSM xvi, 19).6 Further on, Tochmarc Emire (‘The Wooing of Emer’) mentions the Bealtaine fire custom: Co Beltine .i. bil-tine .i. tene soinmech .i. dá tenid dognitis druídh co tincet- laib moraib 7 doléictis na cethrae etarro ar tedmannaib cacha blíadnae. Nó co bel-dine .i. Bel dano ainm dé ídail; is and doaiselbthea díne cacha cethrae fo selb Beil. ‘Till Bealtaine, that is a goodly fire, i.e. an auspicious fire, that is two fires which the druids used to make with great incantations, and they used to send the cattle between them against the diseases of each year. Or till Beldine, that is, Bel moreover is the name of a heathen god, and then the herds of every cattle used to be assigned to the possession of Bel.’7 The first part is paralleled in the Irish glossaries (see below), but without reference to the second part where the animal herds are directly associated with the ‘idol god’. Much later, the early seventeenth-century Irish historian Geoffrey Keating provides further evidence by describing an assembly of chieftains during Bealtaine at Uisnech8 in the centre of Ireland in honour of Béil – ‘the god that they adored’ – and also ritual fires lit for the Christian festival of Ss Philip and James, i.e. May 1st or May Day. His words echo the earlier glossary texts, but state 5 Lugnasad: MacNeill 1962/84; Kelly 1997, 460–61. Imbolc: Williams 2005. Also, see A. Minard in Koch 2006: Beltaine i, 201–03, Samain iv, 1556–58, Imbolc iii, 958-9, Lugnasad iii, 1201–02. 6 See also the origin-legends recounted by Ó Crualaoich 2003, 100–02, Ross 2000, 113–14, and Minard’s thoughts on the bi-partite Celtic year in Koch 2006 iv, 1556, 1558. 7 Van Hamel 1956, 43; translation mine. 8 Binchy (1958, 114; followed by Hutton 1996, 219) dismisses an Irish triad and Keating’s ‘assembly’ at Uisnech, while accepting the possibility of a ‘fire-cult’ there. The modern townland is Ushnagh Hill/Cnoc Uisnigh, Conry parish, Westmeath. The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 10, 2016, 89–126 Bealtaine in Irish and Scottish Place-names 91 that the custom was followed throughout Ireland: ‘It was their wont to light two fires in honour of Béil in every district in Ireland, and to drive the weak (deibhleán) of each species of cattle that were in the district between the two fires as a preservative to shield them from all diseases during that year; and it is from that fire that was made in honour of Béil that the noble festival on which falls the day of the two apostles, namely Philip and James, is called Bealltaine that is Béilteine, or the fire of Béil’ (... ón teinidh sin do-níthi i nonóir do Bhéil ghairmthear Bealltaine don fhéil uasal… .i. teine Bhéil.)9 In Scotland, Martin Martin, born in Skye, and encouraged by the antiquarian Sir Robert Sibbald, gave an account of fire customs he observed when visiting the Western Isles in the later 17th century (article published in 1697; book in 1703). He mentions Taranis as a god worshipped by the druids in Britain, according to Caesar, and continues with an attempt at interpreting the May Day rites: Another God of the Britons was Belus or Belinus, which seems to have been the Assyrian God Bel or Belus; and probably from this pagan deity comes the Scots term of Beltin, the [first] day of May, having its first rise from the custom practised by the Druids in the isles, of extinguishing all the fires in the parish until the tythes were paid; and upon payment of them the fires were kindled in each family, and never till then. In those days malefactors were burnt between two fires; hence when they would express a man to be in a great strait, they say, ‘He is between two fires of Bel,’ which in their language they express thus, Edir da din Veaul or Bel (Martin, 2nd edn, 1716, 105). The Gaelic saying was still known 200 years later, although druids, tythes and malefactors appear to have been added by Martin.10 The fire custom in Europe, Ireland and Scotland As part of his early 20th-century study The Golden Bough, Sir J. G. Frazer found a similar fire custom, held at various times during the growing season, alive in popular tradition across Europe to north Africa. According to the basic rite, a 9 Keating in Dinneen, ed., ii, 246–49. Quoted in Frazer 1913, 158–59. See further, Lyle 2003. 10 Carmichael heard it used for a hard task ‘by an old man in Lewis in 1873: … bu dora dhomhsa sin a dheanamh dhuit na dhol eadar dha theine mhoir Bheaill … ‘it were worse for me to do that for thee than to pass between the two great fires of Beall’ (i, 183). For Ireland, see Binchy 1958, 129: ‘the well-known metaphor still used by native speakers: idir dhá theine lá Bealtaine’. The Journal of Scottish Name Studies 10, 2016, 89–126 92 Kay Muhr bonfire was kindled, sometimes from friction, and the assembled people and their cattle passed between fires or over the embers, after which the people took bits of wood or ashes from the fire to bless their fields. This agrees with practice in Ireland and Scotland, as described further below. Frazer treated these performances at various dates, which ranged from Lent to Midsummer, as manifestations of the one custom (Frazer 1913, 259). In his earlier volumes, Frazer had interpreted the fires as pagan sun-worship, but by 1913 as a rite of purification and renewal, taking seriously the explanation regularly given by those taking part in the fire custom (Frazer 1913, 341). He was sufficiently convinced of its antiquity to suggest that, in Ireland, this was the rite celebrated by druids for the king of Tara which was challenged or pre- empted in the story of St Patrick lighting his new fire for Easter at Slane (Frazer 1913, 158; Bieler 1979, 84–87, note p. 203; Muirchú §§15 (14)). Although dismissed for discrepancies of date and location by John O’Donovan (1847, li) and Daniel Binchy (1958, 129), Muirchú’s legend remains a possible early witness to new fires being lit at both Bealtaine and Easter. Frazer then notes that the most common date for the fire festivals in Europe was the summer solstice, when the sun has reached its height: A faint tinge of Christianity has been given to them by naming Midsummer Day after St.
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