Hundreds of people gathered on Edinburgh’s Calton Hill as the Beltane Fire Festival returned after a two-year absence.
The Celtic ritual celebration, which had been taking place in its current form since 1988, was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid pandemic.
It brings people together to revel in the birth of summer and the fertility of the land.
Beltane roughly translates as “bright fire” and, in ancient communities, fire was seen as a purifier and healer.
Farmers would also have driven their cattle between bonfires to cleanse and protect them before being put into the fields.
At Saturday night’s event, volunteers re-enacted the story of the May Queen, culminating in the lighting of a bonfire at midnight.
Tom Watton, chairman of the Beltane Society Board, said “Bringing the Beltane Fire Festival back to Calton Hill after two years away has been a labour of love.
"I want to extend my thanks to every one of our many volunteers who give their time and passion to bring the Beltane story to life.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here