“Fire must be put out and created afresh or it, too, grows old and full of trouble and sin.”
In Neil Gunn’s 1941 novel THE SILVER DARLINGS, set in the post-Clearances Highlands in the early 19th century, a cholera outbreak prompts villagers to kindle a need-fire.
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https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571090419-silver-darlings/
#Scottish #literature #folklore #CelticStudies #Bealltain #Beltane #MayDay
“Bealltain (Beltane) is the first day of May. On May Day all the fires of the district were extinguished & ‘tein eigin’, need-fire, produced on the knoll.”
—“Am Beannachadh Bealltain” (“The Beltane Blessing”)
from Carmina Gadelica (Alexander Carmichael, 1900), online via the National Library of Scotland
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https://digital.nls.uk/early-gaelic-book-collections/archive/78420254
#Scottish #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #folklore #CelticStudies #Bealltain #Beltane #MayDay
“Bealltain (Beltane) is the first day of May. On May Day all the fires of the district were extinguished & ‘tein eigin’, need-fire, produced on the knoll.”
—“Am Beannachadh Bealltain” (“The Beltane Blessing”)
from Carmina Gadelica (Alexander Carmichael, 1900), online via the National Library of Scotland
1/2
https://digital.nls.uk/early-gaelic-book-collections/archive/78420254
#Scottish #Gaelic #Gaidhlig #folklore #CelticStudies #Bealltain #Beltane #MayDay
Assoc for Scottish Literature