Bealtine Favourite readings are not always in books. For me the landscape is itself a text, a palimpsest, overwritten again and again by generation after generation, and also by the changing features of nature, over millennia. So it was that on Sunday 29th April, I woke early and set off for Dublin to the Unitarian church, at around six thirty in the morning, with time to dawdle along the way. As I began, a red and somewhat orange hued sun sat motionless in the sky east of Nephin in West Mayo. The morning was dry, cool, with the expectation of heat to come. For the first part of the journey I drove through a landscape of small fields, stone walls enclosing rushy patches of green. Bright yellow whins were everywhere, and stands of silver birch were unfurling their leaves. Larger darker sections of planted evergreens completed the scene. Of course the prevailing landscape was bog, everything else subjugated to it. The roads are much improved these days. Some towns, like Swinford are bypassed, but everywhere the signs of man, from early iron age ringforts, crannogs in lakes, Norman tower houses, and the big houses of the eighteenth century set in beech ringed parkland. My thoughts wander, ideas come and go, a subtle physical change here and there is noticed, committed to memory, an editing of the book of Ireland. I am a modern Dindsenchas of the road from Mayo to Dublin. From Cruachan on the high limestone plains of Roscommon where Queen Medbh set out on the journey, we call the Tain, the road descends slowly towards the Shannon. Another great piece of mythology intrudes, and Sionan is again chased the length of Ireland by waters from the Well of Knowledge, thus creating the Shannon river. Once I have reversed Cromwell’s bother, I am neither in hell or Connacht but Leinster and another change begins to manifest itself, order, the landscape is here more ordered. Fields regular, thorn hedged, controlled, the free spirit of nature curbed. Nevertheless beautiful in it’s own way. Strangely the new motorway takes me away from habitations across untouched countryside, drowsy cattle, white faced sheep, horses cropping the first grasses of the day. Do they know it is Sunday? Extra traffic rouses me from reverie and I approach Baile atha Cliath, Dyflinn, Dublin. Irish Viking Norman with a touch of English influence and so many other muses. My physical and spiritual journey across Ireland is nearly over but not before I spend some time in Stephen’s Green. Here I have reached a landscape, ordered controlled, designed, contrary to that from where I began, Mayo, wild, free, whimsical. Yet each in their own way are manifestations of the spiritual landscape that is Ireland’s, and I am privileged to experience all in the course of a few hours, again and again. Bealtine …….The Fires of Baal May is the month of the fires of Baal. Geoffrey Keating, in the 17th century writing on the Fair at Uisneach, of Meath, says, "This fair, or assembly, was held on the first day of the month of May; and they were wont to exchange or barter their cattle and other property there. They were also accustomed to make offerings to the chief god which they worshipped, named Bel; and it was a custom with them to make two fires in honour of this Bel in every cantred of Ireland, and to drive a couple of every kind of cattle in the cantred between the two fires as a preservative." On the summit of Beltany Hill, just over a mile from Raphoe in county Donegal there stands one of the finest stone circles in Ireland. Beltany stone circle, Raphoe. Today it consists of 64 standing stones out of an original 80. It celebrates the god Baal. It was a place of pre Christian celebratory fire. A few days prior to Bealtine season, every flame was ordered extinguished, to be relighted on the first of May by holy fire drawn directly from the sun. On May-day the Druids made great fires on hill tops, all in sight of each other. These fires were in honor of Beal, or Bealan, Latinized by the Roman writers into Belanus, by which name the ancient Gauls understood the sun, and therefore the first of May is, called la Bealtine, or the day of Belan's fires. May-day is likewise called la Bealtine by the Highlanders of Scotland. Christian churches later transferred these ceremonies to 23rd June the eve of the birth of John, so as to move them away from the proximity to Easter, thus to be less of a threat to the new dispensation. The earliest mention of the Beiltine is found in Cormac, archbishop of Cashel (d. 908). The Two fires custom is alluded to here. Hence the phrase, to express a great danger: 'itir dha theinne beil,' i.e. between two fires. That the sacrifice was strictly superintended by priests, originally druidic but later Christian. This custom has parallels in Scotland and Brittany. So let us look forward to May and perhaps reflect on our Celtic spiritual heritage; 'What potent blood hath modest May.' - Ralph W. Emerson Joe McDermott Sunday 29th April 2007 Dublin Unitarian Church Cover