Edinburgh’s popular Beltane Fire Festival returns to Calton Hill next week - a spectacular celebratory event that attracts thousands each year.
The ancient Celtic event celebrates fire, new life and purity, and marks the end of the darker seasons and the arrival of summer on May Day. The age old tradition, that goes back 3,000 years, was first revived for modern times in Edinburgh in 1988 and is now one the largest celebration of its kind in the world.
Ahead of the big celebration on April 30, members of the Beltane Fire Society were busking in the streets to raise money for their charity.
The ancient Celtic event celebrates fire, new life and purity, and marks the end of the darker seasons and the arrival of summer on May Day. The age old tradition, that goes back 3,000 years, was first revived for modern times in Edinburgh in 1988 and is now one the largest celebration of its kind in the world.
Ahead of the big celebration on April 30, members of the Beltane Fire Society were busking in the streets to raise money for their charity.
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00:00 We are the Beltane Fire Society!
00:02 [Cheering]
00:05 And on the 30th of April, we're going to have a really big fire festival and you are invited.
00:11 I've got flyers for it, we do sell tickets for it. Come and speak to us.
00:16 We have a registered charity and rehearsal rooms to make the drum crew sound as good as they do.
00:21 Cost lots of money. So if you could, please, dig deep, take out a note, fold it up and put it in one of the buckets.
00:27 [Drumming]
00:48 The Beltane Fire Festival is a massive community celebration that happens on top of Carleton Hill on the night of 30th April.
00:55 Which is one of the Celtic Water Days and we're celebrating the beginning of summer.
00:59 We follow the procession of the May Queen and the Green Man as they go around the hill, Carleton Hill,
01:05 visiting all the elemental points, paying respect to those elements and bringing in the sun.
01:11 It always kicks off just as the sun is setting. There's about 500 volunteers that take part.
01:17 There's drumming groups, there's fire sculptures, there's fire spinners.
01:21 There's lots of traditional roles that are filled anew each year.
01:26 And we process around the hill, entertaining and having a good time.
01:31 So I've been with Beltane since about 2017. So I've been various different characters throughout my experience.
01:41 I've done everything from drum crews to fire spinning groups.
01:44 And for Samhain past this year I was also the Summer King.
01:48 So I've taken many different roles throughout it.
01:51 I like to dabble in different experiences and get different things out of it every time.
01:56 Which I think is the beauty of Beltane, every experience is always different.
02:00 It always changes every year so it brings something new every time.
02:04 The commitment and the excitement does ramp up the closer you get to the festival.
02:09 It depends what role you're playing on the night and which group you're in.
02:12 So drumming groups tend to rehearse a couple of times a week.
02:16 Most performance groups also do a couple of times a week.
02:19 If you are wanting to nail a particular acrobatic routine or a particular drumming rhythm you might have additional practices.
02:26 And it tends to be a beautiful way to build up in the week before the festival.
02:31 Everyone coming together to finish costumes in a mad rush and make sure they've got all their performances down.
02:38 [Drumming]
02:46 (laughing)