All Fired Up: The people behind the Beltane Festival

It can only be Beltane. This year Edinburgh’s great pagan fire festival (or crazy, health and safety defying knees-up, depending on how you view it) celebrates its 25th anniversary. It’s come a long way since 1988, when on a rainy April night, five performers and a couple of hundred curious locals wandered around a hill in the middle of the city until dawn arrived to greet them. We spoke to five of the people behind Beltane…

Angus Farquhar, Beltane founder

Twenty-five years is quite something, but on the other hand Beltane is an extremely old tradition.

Still, 25 years is a generational marker and also exactly half my life. Back in 1988, I sat down with the late Hamish Henderson and decided to put on a fire festival in Edinburgh. I had seen them in Spain and Italy, mostly Catholic but often quite pagan when you got to the smaller villages. I wanted to bring the radical aspects of folk culture to Scotland. I had also been going to the Burning of the Clavie in Burghead on the Moray Firth, a really old fire festival. I was becoming obsessed.

The first year we went until dawn, ran through the fire, and it was wild. It was quite anarchic, but by hook or by crook it’s survived. I used to drum myself into a kind of madness and then you’d look up in the morning at the watery sun rising and feel a sort of intensification of life. I was more pagan then in my outlook but I still feel this incredible energy on the night and the sense performers are doing something greater than themselves. Beltane started out as an extension of socialism – something liberating for ordinary people in the middle of a city.

The first May Queen was Liz Ranken, a remarkable ex-dancer with DV8 who did nine years. There have only been five May Queens in 25 years. Also key in the early festivals was Lindsay John, a butoh performer in Japan who was born in St Lucia. He had these twin qualities – Trinidadian carnival and a strong use of the exposed body from butoh that he brought to Beltane. Both spirits have remained.

There are descriptions of fire festivals in Edinburgh going back to the 16th century. It was the lower orders, the servants, who would go up Arthur’s Seat. There was whisky, dancing and seeing things through to dawn. It was frowned on by the authorities as licentious behaviour.

I’m lucky to be one of the people who has been every year since the start. When you see Beltane in full flow, when the Reds come tearing down the hill to make their attack on the White Women, the scale of it takes your breath away. Marriages, births and handfastings have all come out of Beltane. It’s become this incredible social reality and an alternative way of life in Edinburgh.

Erin Chadwick, May Queen

My costume is a surprise. It’s all handmade and I’ve been working on it since January. I have a lot of people who help me and this year it’s symbolic of fullness – alive and green and vibrant. That’s all I’m going to tell you.

This is my sixth year doing Beltane and my third as May Queen. I got a knock on the door one day and there was the May Queen and a Blue Man on my doorstep. I felt like running away. It was a huge deal when they asked me and it took a long time to accept that this is who I am.

The May Queen represents everything to me. She is the symbol of life, Mother Earth, goddess, maiden, fertility, and potential. Even now that I am the May Queen I talk about her as something removed from me. I just have to trust that the moment I walk on the hill, I am her. I wouldn’t say it’s an out-of-body experience but I won’t remember a large proportion of the night.

One of the aspects I cherish is the handfasting, when we join couples who have chosen to make this loving commitment at Beltane. It’s such an honour for me to be able to do that. They carry that moment with them long after the fire is extinguished and the costumes have been packed up. The things that stay with you are the looks on people’s face, a punter’s smile, the flicker of a flame, even torrential rain. Tiny little moments that burn into your memory. There are challenging moments too, but we deal with them. When the rain is on and you’re trying to light the fires using traditional methods… well, out comes the ritual Zippo.

Hutch, Green Man

I arrived in Edinburgh in 2004 and as soon as I went to Beltane I knew I was meant to be a part of it. I’ve always been a very spiritual person and for me Beltane isn’t a performance, it’s a ritual. It’s about our connection to the land and its continuous cycles.

In 2007 I took part for the first time. This is my first year as the Green Man, who represents life and movement. When he is in his Horned God form, which I did last year, he is more bestial. As Green Man he is more nourishing. There is also an aspect of the fool to him – of social change, and truthtelling. Most people would be training ridiculously to play this character. The dance and rebirthing part of his cycle are very physical. But I’ve always been fit as a fiddle and used to be a circus performer.

I have three costumes. The Horned God isn’t going to be a giant shrub this year, like he has been in the past. Instead my friend has made a giant copper stag’s head. Then I have a hooded, jacket-style outfit with big cuffs and baggy trousers for the Fool aspect. Finally, the Green Man, traditionally, is naked and painted green.

In 2010 I was a Red Man and lots of stuff happens because, well, you’re the embodiment of chaos and sexual energy. It’s quite mental and a fantastic liberation. You’re almost completely naked with a bunch of really drunk people around you. What’s liberating is that we – naked and painted red – own that space, not them. But it’s not to say bad stuff doesn’t happen. When people come with the wrong attitude, just to get drunk and see naked women, they ruin the spirit of Beltane.

Matthew Richardson, society chairman