(M135) The Beltane fires appear to have been kindled also in Ireland, for Cormac, “or somebody in his name, says that _belltaine_, May-day, was so called from the ‘lucky fire,’ or the ‘two fires,’ which the druids of Erin used to make on that day with great incantations; and cattle, he adds, used to be brought to those fires, or to be driven between them, as a safeguard against the diseases of the year.”(385) Again, a very ancient Irish poem, enumerating the May Day celebrations, mentions among them a bonfire on a hill (_tendal ar cnuc_); and another old authority says that these fires were kindled in the name of the idol-god Bel.(386) From an old life of St. Patrick we learn that on a day in spring the heathen of Ireland were wont to extinguish all their fires until a new fire was kindled with solemn ceremony in the king’s house at Tara. In the year in which St. Patrick landed in Ireland it chanced that the night of the extinguished fires coincided with the Eve of Easter; and the saint, ignorant of this pagan superstition, resolved to celebrate his first Easter in Ireland after the true Christian fashion by lighting the holy Paschal fire on the hill of Slane, which rises high above the left bank of the Boyne, about twelve miles from the mouth of the river. So that night, looking from his palace at Tara across the darkened landscape, the king of Tara saw the solitary fire flaring on the top of the hill of Slane, and in consternation he asked his wise men what that light meant. They warned him of the danger that it betokened for the ancient faith of Erin.(387) In spite of the difference of date between Easter and Beltane, we may suspect that the new fire annually kindled with solemn ceremony about Easter in the king of Ireland’s palace at Tara was no other than the Beltane fire. We have seen that in the Highlands of Scotland down to modern times it was customary to extinguish all fires in the neighbourhood before proceeding to kindle the sacred flame.(388) The Irish historian Geoffrey Keating, who wrote in the first part of the seventeenth century, tells us that the men of Ireland held a great fair every year in the month of May at Uisnech (_Ushnagh_) in the county of Meath, “and at it they were wont to exchange their goods and their wares and their jewels. At it, they were, also, wont to make a sacrifice to the Arch-God that they adored, whose name was Bèl (_bayl_). It was, likewise, their usage to light two fires to Bèl, in every district of Ireland, at this season, and to drive a pair of each kind of cattle that the district contained, between those two fires, as a preservative to guard them against all the diseases of that year. It is from that fire, thus made in honour of Bèl, that the day [the first of May] on which the noble feast of the apostles, Philip and James, is held, has been called Bèltaini, or Bèaltaine (_Bayltinnie_); for Beltaini is the same as Bèil-teinè, _i.e._ Teiné Bhèil (_Tinnie Vayl_) or Bèl’s