Beltane E3: Bonfires & Butter

Wild Kin: A Celtic Podcast · Apr 19, 2026 · 12m · transcript

The Celtic festival of Beltane was never just about the fires. Behind the bonfires of May Eve lay something deeper — a three-thousand-year reverence for cattle, milk, and butter, and a persistent fear of the forces that might steal them away.

Further Reading

Sanas Cormaic (Cormac’s Glossary)

The Schools’ Collection, 1937–1939

“The Needfire Ritual”

Examples of the Survival in Scotland of Superstitions Relating to Fire”

“Four Millennia of Dairy Surplus and Deposition Revealed through Compound-Specific Stable Isotope Analysis and Radiocarbon Dating of Irish Bog Butters”

Exploring the…