Note 370 — Chapter IV

Footnote 370

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Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, from the MSS. of John Ramsay, Esq., of Ochtertyre, edited by Alexander Allardyce (Edinburgh and London, 1888), ii. 439-445. As to the tein-eigin or need-fire, see below, pp. 269 sqq. The etymology of the word Beltane is uncertain; the popular derivation of the first part from the Phoenician Baal is absurd. See, for example, John Graham Dalyell, The Darker Superstitions of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1834), pp. 176 sq.: "The recognition of the pagan divinity Baal, or Bel, the Sun, is discovered through innumerable etymological sources. In the records of Scottish history, down to the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, multiplied prohibitions were issued from the fountains of ecclesiastical ordinances, against kindling Bailfires, of which the origin cannot be mistaken. The festival of this divinity was commemorated in Scotland until the latest date." Modern scholars are not agreed as to the derivation of the name Beltane. See Rev. John Gregorson Campbell, Witchcraft and Second Sight in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (Glasgow, 1902), pp. 268 sq.; J.A. MacCulloch, The Religion of the Ancient Celts (Edinburgh, 1911), p. 264.