Happy Beltain

[Ninehostages]

Oh absolutely, Jock. This is Celtic history from the time of the Druids and perhaps further back.

I just share it because an old teacher like me, with interest in various religious traditions and history can't contain himself.

Edinburgh...

Here's to your inner pagan, Father.
(I never thought that I'd be putting that character string together.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYkC2aXp5wM

[Father Bill]

Edinburgh...

Here's to your inner pagan, Father.
(I never thought that I'd be putting that character string together.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYkC2aXp5wM

Thank you for the interesting juxtaposition. You gave me a smile.

Not really sure what I've just watched. I think the best indication is at the end where it is credited to some production company I've never heard of. My best guess is that it's one of those situations somewhat like Ren Faires where an organization puts on some sort of spectacle in the name of something else or some group who would never recognize it if they attended or saw it; flashy, spectacular, somewhat creepy, and totally disconnected from any historical accuracy or existence.

[Ninehostages]

Thank you for the interesting juxtaposition. You gave me a smile.

Not really sure what I've just watched. I think the best indication is at the end where it is credited to some production company I've never heard of. My best guess is that it's one of those situations somewhat like Ren Faires where an organization puts on some sort of spectacle in the name of something else or some group who would never recognize it if they attended or saw it; flashy, spectacular, somewhat creepy, and totally disconnected from any historical accuracy or existence.

Nobody has a clue what "Druidic" rites were like or if they even held them. They wrote nothing down and the only descriptive reference of them that is more than a few words long dating from Classical times was an unflattering one by Tacitus. He complained about their bloody ritual and how it justified their conquest by Caesar (which is rich coming from a city-state that had humans ripped apart daily in arenae for mass entertainment). It is pure theatrical and recent invention. They don't even have any Druid archaeology, yet and don't expect any to turn up. Whatever "Beltane" ritual was like was crushed out of the Britons during four centuries of heavy Roman military occupation, followed by the earliest Christian conversions in Western Europe.

I get a giggle out of the "Druid" hippies that turn up at Stonehenge every solstace to "continue Druidic worship at the place". Well, Stonehenge was already as old as the Roman Colosseum is to us today when the first Druids happened upon Salisbury. If the Druids really did use the place for something-or-other, it would have been as phoney baloney as what today's drug addled mystics do every year. Stonehenge is not a Druid temple. It was built by the people-before-the-people-before the Celtic Britons. They likely didn't leave a folk tradition of the place behind either as the newest DNA archaeology shows that they vanished without their seed continuing on in the British population. The next wave of "Beaker People" who inherited Stonehenge were there to stay but the brown skinned Neolithic people who built the great stone monuments in Western Europe seem to have died out (killed off?). We don't know what they believed. What we do know is that the Celts had little interest in the Solstices and had their feasts at Samhain (Halloween) and Beltane (May Day).

It's harmless, really. The Roman Church borrowed what they could from the remnants of that culture. The Covenanters would be burned those kids in Edinburgh as witches, though.