Beltane Fire Festival Turns the Wheel of Time

 Image: Charlotte ML

By Ally  Collingham 

The annual Beltane fire festival is set to return to Edinburgh’s Calton Hill on Thursday April 30. The Gaelic festival marks the end of winter and the beginning of summer.  

The festival will begin at the national monument and move anticlockwise around the path up Calton Hill in the form of a procession. May Queen and Green Man will lead the cavalcade of performers who are related to them and their journey. En route, lighted by fire torches and followed by the public, there will be various characters who will either help or hinder the Green Man’s fate and the May Queen’s destiny. 

A dramatic stage performance will signify the inception of summer, and the May Queen and Green Man will light a huge bonfire to initiate the birth of summer. 

Resurrected in 1998, the festival is part of the Celtic traditions of celebrating May. The modern version is the spring and summer counterpart to Samhuinn Fire Festival at Holyrood Park on Halloween. 

The events are immersive experiences which involve modern reimagining’s of ancient Celtic festivals to mark the turning seasons. 

Growing with every year, by 2025, 7000 people celebrated Beltane after dark on Calton Hill. The Queen of May will lead everyone out of the darkness of winter, through a procession of fire, music and transformation which herald the end of dark winter nights and up into the light. 

Jenny Bloom, Chair of the Beltane Fire Society, said: “The winter has been long, and the world feels darker than ever. 

“Where there is community there is hope – so join us on the Hill as we relight the Beltane fires, drum in the summer, and reclaim the fierce joy of living.”