Folk Rite & Fertility · Edinburgh, Midlothian
Beltane Fire Festival, Calton Hill
Each 30 April, thousands climb Calton Hill for the modern revival of Beltane — bonfires, body-painted performers, and the May Queen waking the Green Man in a frank celebration of the year's fertility. A living rite, honestly labelled: the revival is 1988, the festival it revives is genuinely ancient.
More stories at this spot
- The May Queen and Green Man's ritual union
- The 'wild hunt' of red performers
Sources
Nearby on the map
Five months after the lightning-strike meeting at Wemyss, Mary married her tall lute-player in the chapel royal at Holyrood — against her advisers, her cousin Elizabeth and, soon enough, her own better judgement. The passion was real; the marriage was a catastrophe conducted in a palace.
Documented historyScandal & Society17 Danube Street (Dora Noyce's establishment)Edinburgh, Midlothian · ScotlandBehind a genteel Georgian door in respectable Stockbridge, Dora Noyce ran Edinburgh's most celebrated house of ill repute for over thirty years — twinset, pearls and Conservative Party membership, greeting the fleet with 'business is always good when the Navy's in'. She preferred the term 'YMCA with extras'.
Documented historyFolk Rite & FertilityRosslyn Chapel (the Green Men)Roslin, Midlothian · ScotlandA late-medieval chapel carved with more than a hundred Green Men — pagan faces sprouting vines inside a Christian church, the old fertility spirit grinning from every corner of the stonework. The greatest concentration of the motif anywhere in Britain.
Documented historySpotted an error, or hold a better source? Write to marquis@marquisdemayfair.com — corrections are made, never defended. Our methodology.