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BEL FIRE RITES IN BRITAIN 2609

commanding a view of the Newton Stone site, dnd possibly the site of an altar blazing with perpetual fire to Bel, to whom that stone was dedicated.

The ‘‘ Bel-Fire’’ or “ Bel-tane’’ rites and games which still survive in many parts of the British Isles are generally recognized to be vestiges of a former widely prevalent worship of “ Bel” in these islands, extending from St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall to Shetland, which is now seen to have been introduced by the Pheenicians, and to be a survival of the great solar festival celebrations at the Summer solstice. The name “ Bel-tane’’ or ‘“‘ Bel-tine’’ means literally “ Bel’s Fire.”’?

The rite of Bel-Fire now surviving in the British Isles is mostly a mere game performed by boys and young people on Midsummer eve in the remoter parts of the country. On a moor, a circle is cut on the turf sufficient.to hold the company and a bonfire is lit inside, and torches are waved round the head (presumably in sunwise direction, see later) while dancing round the fire; after which the individuals leap through the flames or glowing embers.? As a serious religious ceremony it was not infrequently practised until about a generation ago by farmers in various parts of the country and in Ireland, who on the eve of the Summer solstice passed themselves, and drove their cattle through

:“ Bel-tane ” or “ Bel-tine’’ is defined by old Scottish, Irish and Gaelic writers as “ Fire of the god Bil or Bal or Bel.” Thus the Irish king Cormac at the beginning of the tenth century a.p. describes “‘ Gil-tene ”’ as Lucky Fire, and defines 27/ or Bial as“ an idol god.”’ (Cormac’s Glossary, ed. Stokes, 19, 38) ; and Keating states “ Bel-tainni is the same as /eilteive, that is, teine Bheil or Bel’s Fire.’ Its second element Yan in Breton and 7Tane, Tine or Tene, means ‘‘ Fire ’ in Scottish and Irish Scottish with variant Teind or Tynd, ‘a spark of Fire” (J.S.D., 38, 564) and Eddic Gothie Tandr, “ to light or kindle Fire,’’ thus showing Gothic origin of English “ Tinder."’ This Tan or Tene seems to be derived from the Akkadian Tenw for the Crossed Fire-producing sticks (M.D. 1176) with meaning also “ to grind [firewood],’’ 7b. The Breton form of the name for 3el-Fire of Tan-Heol is the same Tan (Fire) transposed + Heol, “ the Sun ” or Bil.

* Such a game was practised in the writer's boyhood in the West of Scotland. And Mr. 5. Laing, the archeologist, who was born in 1810, writes with reference to these Bel-Fires lighted on the highest hills of Orkney and Shetland. ‘ As a boy, I have rushed with my playmates through the smoke of these bonfires without a suspicion that we were repeating the homage paid to Baal.’ (Himan Origins, 1897, 161.)