ed from
_bel-tene_, "a goodly fire," or from _bel-dine_, because newly-born
(_dine_) cattle were offered to Bel, an idol-god.[915] The latter is
followed by those who believe in a Celtic Belus, connected with Baal. No
such god is known, however, and the god Belenos is in no way connected
with the Semitic divinity. M. D'Arbois assumes an unknown god of death,
Beltene (from _beltu_, "to die"), whose festival Beltane was.[916] But
Beltane was a festival of life, of the sun shining in his strength. Dr.
Stokes gives a more acceptable explanation of the word. Its primitive
form was _belo-te_[_p_]_nia_, from _belo-s_, "clear," "shining," the
root of the names Belenos and Belisama, and _te_[_p_]_nos_, "fire." Thus
the word would mean something like "bright fire," perhaps the sun or the
bonfire, or both.[917]

The folk-survivals of the Beltane and Midsummer festivals show that both
were intended to promote fertility.

One of the chief ritual acts at Beltane was the kindling of bonfires,
often on hills. The house-fires in the district were often extinguished,
the bonfire being lit by friction from a rotating wheel--the German
"need-fire."[918] The fire kept off disease and evil, hence cattle were
driven through it, or, according to Cormac, between two fires lit by
Druids, in order to keep them in health during the year.[919] Sometimes
the fire was lit beneath a sacred tree, or a pole covered with greenery
was surrounded by the fuel, or a tree was burned in the fire.[920] These
trees survive in the Maypole of later custom, and they represented the
vegetation-spirit, to whom also the worshippers assimilated themselves
by dressing in leaves. They danced sunwise round the fire or ran through
the fields with blazing branches or wisps of straw, imitating the course
of the sun, and thus benefiting the fields.[921] For the same reason the
tree itself was probably borne through the fields. Houses were decked
with boughs and thus protected by the spirit of vegetation.[922]

An animal representing the spirit of vegetation may have been slain. In
late survivals of Beltane at Dublin, a horse's skull and bones were
thrown into the fire,[923] the attenuated form of an earlier sacrifice
or slaying of a divine victim, by whom strength was transferred to all
the animals which passed through the fire. In some cases a human victim
may have been slain. This is suggested by customs surviving in
Perthshire in the eighteenth century, when a cake was b