BYAL-tin-uh
The festival marking the start of summer, celebrated with bonfires at Uisneach and across Ireland.
Bealtaine fell around the first of May, opposite Samhain on the wheel of the year, and marked the start of summer. Cattle were driven out to their summer pastures, often between two bonfires whose smoke was believed to protect the herd from disease for the season ahead.
Uisneach, traditionally reckoned the ritual centre of Ireland, was the site of the greatest of these fires: tradition holds that a Bealtaine blaze lit there by the High King could be seen from every corner of the island, and that other fires across Ireland were rekindled from it. The Lebor Gabála Érenn places the arrival of the Tuatha Dé Danann in Ireland on Bealtaine, wrapped in a mist that darkened the sun for three days.
Bealtaine's name shares its likely root, "bright fire," with the wider custom of lighting fires at the start of summer, and its rites of protection and renewal made it one of the year's four great quarter-day festivals alongside Samhain, Imbolc, and Lúnasa.