Pagan fire festival reignites with a fee

THE Beltane Fire Festival, which heralds the arrival of spring with spectacular traditional dancing, is to return to Edinburgh after organisers struck a deal with the council to lease Calton Hill for a night.

The agreement, which puts the boisterous all-night event on a formal footing for the first time, will mean revellers from around the world being charged between 2 and 4 to go on to the hill to watch the celebrations.

Last year’s event was cancelled for the first time in its 15-year history after council officials insisted the Beltane Fire Society needed a public entertainment licence.

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It is understood councillors wanted the celebration to "grow up" and become more professional following complaints about excessive drinking, noise and risks to public safety.

The number of people attending the event, which has attracted crowds of 15,000 in the past, will be limited to 12,000 as part of the new arrangement.

A council insider said: "The event is fantastic and it is great to be supporting it again on a proper, contractual level. There were concerns that there was no control over anything and that people were just turning up and getting completely out of their heads.

"There were people so drunk that they were waking up on the hill the following morning."

The event is now expected to go ahead this year, with organisers agreeing to a string of conditions imposed by Edinburgh City Council.

As well as the limit on numbers, the festival will be forced to finish at 1am and provide stewarding to ensure crowd safety. The deal is expected to be approved by councillors at a meeting next week.

Organisers are introducing the entrance charge to meet the cost of providing stewards.

Ricky Henderson, the city council’s leisure leader, said: "There will be some fairly robust conditions placed on their licence."

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The fire festival, which takes place on the night of 30 April, features 300 performers and celebrates the beginning of summer in the old Celtic calendar. Staged at Calton Hill since 1988, it is the biggest Beltane celebration in the UK and attracts visitors from all over the world.

Beltane, which has strong undertones of fertility, has significance for pagans, who believe that the event marks the "coming of age" of the gods born at the previous corresponding winter solstice.

Dougie Kerr, the Calton ward councillor, said this year’s event was the organisers’ last chance to prove they could operate the festival without disruption to neighbours.

Mr Kerr said: "If it’s going to come back, I’m determined it’s going to come back on a proper footing. It has caused a number of problems in the past and it’s not just problems to the residents. I have been seriously concerned about public safety at this event and I think in the past it has been non-existent."

But Mr Henderson said organisers realised there would have to be controls to ensure the festival runs smoothly.

"I think the impression the officials have got from dealing with the Beltane Fire Society is that people seem to be far more serious and professional in their approach," he said.

The Beltane Fire Society has also agreed to stop the use of drums at 1am and finish cleaning Calton Hill by 9am the following day .

Steve Cardownie, the Deputy Lord Provost and champion of the Edinburgh Festival, said: "This has the potential to be a great event and can be an important part of Edinburgh’s portfolio of festivals. It has always been popular, but there has been a need to improve the public safety. Hopefully, Beltane will remain an important part of the city’s calendar of celebrations."

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The Beltane Fire Society was unavailable for comment yesterday.

The Beltane Fire Festival takes the form of a procession which snakes around the hill between points entitled fire, air, earth and water.

The name is thought to have derived from a Gaelic-Celtic word meaning "bright/sacred fire". It was held to mark and celebrate the blossoming of spring, and coincided with the ancient pastoral event of moving livestock to summer grazing. It was a celebration of the fertility of the land and animals.

Historically, the Beltane festival was the primary focus of a community’s year. Before the Romans divided the seasons into a calendar of 12 months, the Celtic year was marked by four quarter days: Beltane, Lughnasadh, Samhuinn and Imbolc. Of these, Beltane was the most frequently and significantly celebrated.