Discover why 18th-Century Scots performed human sacrifices…over cake!

Something different this May Day?
Well…make Beltane bannock, a simple snack with a long and introguing history of superstition and divination!
For added symbolic heft and flavor, some Scottish cooks coated their bannocks in caudle, a custard-like batter of eggs, milk, cream, and oats.
According to some folklorists, each core caudle ingredient represented a wish for the months ahead: eggs and dairy for plentiful hens and cows, and oats for a bountiful harvest and, for added supplication, a libation would be poured onto the ground before spreading it over the cake!

But now try to imagine.
It’s springtime in the Scottish Highlands, with a quaint bonfire that blazes against the night sky. Around it, a group stands before the flames, passing around a hat containing slices of griddled oatcake, commonly known as bannock.
Each person plucks out a piece, until one unfortunate soul reveal a charcoal-daubed morsel. Fate has declared him the “cailleach Beal-tine”, basically…a scapegoat who must be sacrificed, with some of his companions that grab him, pulling him toward the fire.
And then, just for good measure, they might even lay him out and prepare to draw and quarter him.
Luckily, at the last minute, when it appears his sacrifice is imminent, a group of rescuers rush in to save the poor designated victim.

This was the 18th-century ritual, and the mock sacrifice is just one of several bygone traditions associated with the ancient Celtic festival of Beltane that, celebrated from the eve of April 30 through May 1, marks the beginning of summer.
If modern-day celebrations incorporate some elements like dancers around a maypole or flower-clad May Queens, early Beltane Eve nights were more intense affairs that included flames towards night sky, purification rites, magic, and offerings to powerful beings. With months of summer hunting and farming ahead, it was essential to supplicate both natural and supernatural forces and, like its winter-welcoming fellow festival Samhain, Beltane was believed to be a time when the barrier between the mortal and the magical lifted.
However, due to the lack of written Celtic records, we have little information about the first Beltane festivals, with earliest recorded mention that appears in an early medieval Irish glossary, centuries after its most-credited origins.
And, even if much of the charcoal-smeared bannock’s significance is actually a mystery, these records highlight the griddled oatcake’s auspicious importance on the holiday.
Interestingly, on the Isle of Mull, off the west coast of Scotland, 18th-century local writer John Ramsay wrote that farmers milked their cows through a hole in their bannocks for good luck on Beltane.
Meanwhile, in the Highlands region of Perthshire, Scots even baked a peculiar bannock, maybe to mimic the shape of a sun, and tore off pieces that they’d toss over their shoulders with attendant wishes for crops or livestock health, each dedicated to some particular being, the supposed preserver of their flocks and herds, or to some particular animal, the real destroyer of them, for example to foxes, crows or eagles to protect, for example, their lambs.

However, bannock-based symbolic sacrifices may have their roots in an earlier, more desperate time, when sick cows or a short drought could signal doom for a whole village and, although archaeological evidence suggests that the Celts did perform human sacrifice, scholars have yet to unearth a corpse o something else that confirms with certainty that they performed such a rite on Beltane.
But one archaeologist and Celtic scholar theorized that bannock, Beltane, and human sacrifice may have collided in one famous Iron Age corpse.
This is the story of so-called “Lindow Man”, a body miraculously preserved in a peat bog in Cheshire, England.
Due to the methodical execution of his injuries, with a massive blow to the head, a broken neck from garroting, and stabbing wounds, and thanks to the ancient body’s incredible preserved condition, (as scientists who were able to examine his stomach contents to determine his last supper: mistletoe pollen and a griddled, unleavened flatbread), researchers speculated that he was an unfortunate victim who was sacrificed in the name of a good harvest.
Even if not everyone agrees.

In any case, today there is Edinburgh’s annual Beltane Fire Society festival, a modern celebration that typically involves a dramatic procession and large bonfire atop the city’s Calton Hill.
And no. No one is sacrificed, not even in fake, theatrical fashion.
Happy Beltane!

Images from web – Google Research