Bailc na Bealltainn.
The fourteen days preceding May-day were known as Bailc na Bealltainn, “the balk or ridge of Beltane.” The sea is then as it were awakening, and is more obedient to the winds. Balc means a ridge, also swelling, strength, onfhadh, foghail. The weather threatens frequently without breaking.
“If warm May day be swollen [threatening],
And it be dry the third day,
And it be an east wind after that,
There certainly will be fruit on trees.”[69]
Bealltainn, MAY-DAY.
The advent of summer is everywhere hailed with joy, and the day recognised as the first of the season is naturally one of the most important days in the calendar. Another day of equal importance in the Celtic year was the first of winter, and the names of the two days, Bealltainn and Samhainn, cannot be traced, like so many other notations of the year, to ecclesiastical sources. Like the names Faoilleach (the Storm month), and Iuchar (the Hot month), they are best referred to Pagan times.
Bealltainn is commonly derived from Bel teine, the fire of Baal or Belus, and is considered as sure evidence of the Phoenician origin of the sacred institutions of the Celts. It is a derivation, however, that wants all the elements of probability. There is a want of evidence that the Phoenician Baal, or any deity resembling him, was ever worshipped by the Celts, or that the fires kindled and observances practised on this day had any connection with the attributes ascribed to him; while the analogies of the Gaelic language prevent the supposition that “the fire of Baal” could be rendered “Beall-tein’.” Besides, the word is not Beall-teine, but Bealltainn, a difference in the final syllable sufficiently noticeable to a Gaelic ear. It is the difference between the single and double sound of n. Baal and Ashtoreth were the supreme male and female divinities of the Phoenician and Canaanitish nations, and are supposed to be personifications of the generative and receptive powers of nature, and to be identical with the sun and moon. In Hebrew and kindred languages, Baal is a mere title of honour, signifying “Lord or Possessor of,” and in Gaelic the Sun and Moon are both feminine nouns, merely descriptive of the appearance of these planets. There is nothing that indicates their ever having been looked on as divinities, or ascribing to them any attribute such as belonged to Baal. In Gaelic the noun limited or possessed always precedes the qualifying noun, and it would require strong evidence to show that “Baal’s fire” could be “Beltane” i.e. Baal-fire, and not “Tane-Bel” (Teine-Bhàil), i.e. fire of Baal. The contrast between English and Gaelic in this respect is often very striking, and a safe rule in etymology!
The final syllable is the same as in Samhainn, the end of summer, which is thought by Lhuyd, to be from fuinn (connected with the Latin finis), an end. In this case t is simply accresive. L has an attraction for t after it, as m has for b, and n for d. Beall is likely connected with the other words that have bl in their initial syllable, with a root idea of separating, parting, opening; and claims kindred with blàth, a blossom, bial, the mouth, bealach, a pass, more than with the title of a Semitic deity. It is the opening day of the year, when the rigours of winter are parted with, and the seasons, as it were, separate. Behind lay winter, cold, and unfruitfulness of the earth, but before was warmth and fertility and beauty. The final syllable has no more to do with fire than it has in gamhainn, a stirk, calltainn, a hazel tree.