Firewater back for Beltane as alcohol ban goes up in smoke

Published on Friday 15 April 2005 13:39

A CONTROVERSIAL booze ban at Edinburgh’s world-famous Beltane Fire Festival has been scrapped.

City chiefs have given the go-ahead for alcohol to be drunk at the spectacular event on Calton Hill as long as organisers enforce restrictions on revellers taking glass bottles to the beauty spot.

The move comes a year after legal threats by the Beltane Fire Society forced the authority into a last-minute climbdown over plans to curb boozing at the celebration marking the start of summer.

Plans for this year’s event, on April 30, were unveiled today, with organisers declaring they had resolved all differences with the council.

The local authority and the police say they are now happy to endorse the event, billed as the biggest fire festival in Europe.

The festival, based on ancient Celtic celebrations in Ireland and Scotland, features hundreds of costume-clad characters staging a colourful series of performances around Calton Hill.

Officials insisted last year that no drink was to be brought to the event and imposed a 1am curfew as part of conditions to allow the event to return to Calton Hill after it was abandoned in 2003.

Organisers blamed a lack of support from the council for the cancellation of the event, although they had faced problems paying for the huge running costs. The council agreed to host the event on Calton Hill last year with a crowd limit of 12,000, after the society agreed to charge revellers for entry for the first time.

But the booze ban and curfew were insisted upon by local councillor Dougie Kerr in the wake of long-running protests from local residents about late-night disruption caused by revellers, many of whom stayed on Calton Hill until the early hours of the morning.

However, on the day of last year’s celebration, it emerged that solicitors had been hired to argue that an alcohol ban was a breach of human rights, forcing the council to reverse its ban. More than 7000 people flocked to Calton Hill for last year’s Beltane, despite confusion over the booze ban and controversy over the curfew.

A spokeswoman for the event said today: "We’ve reached agreement with the council that the arrangements that were in place last year will be in place again.

"There won’t be a ban on alcohol, but we are asking people not to bring any glass and they will be able to empty bottles into other containers at the foot of the hill.

"We’d like people to buy them in advance rather than come along on the night without one, although they will be available.

"The event will be completely finished by 1am again and people will be asked to leave after that."

A spokeswoman for the council said today: "We were so im-pressed with the management and policing of last year’s event that we are pleased to see it run along the same lines this year." Derek Francis, chair of the Calton, Regent and Royal Terraces Association, said: "The big issue in the past was noise through the night, but that has been resolved through the curfew."

Tickets for Beltane 2005 are on sale from The Hub on Castlehill, priced 3 in advance.

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EDINBURGH'S Beltane has its origins in the pre-Christian Celtic festival of the same name.

"Beltane" is thought to have derived from a Gaelic word meaning bright or sacred fire.

The festival was held to celebrate the start of summer, and coincided with the ancient pastoral practice of moving livestock to their summer grazing. It did not occur on any fixed solar date, but tended to be held on the first full moon after May Day. The modern Edinburgh Beltane takes parts of these origins and combines them with various elements from spring festivals and mythology throughout Europe.

The event features a range of distinctive characters including the May Queen, who leads a procession around Calton Hill accompanied by a band of White Women warriors and drummers, a Green Man consort and Blue Men druids.

They make their way through various scenes representing earth, water, fire and air before being ambushed by mischievous spirits known as the Red Men.

Beltane was re-instigated in Edinburgh in 1988 by a small band of enthusiasts, with the backing of the School of Scottish Studies at Edinburgh University.