Scotland on vo.rs

The Loch Ness Monster: A Surgeon, a Photograph, and a Toy

Thu, 17 Oct 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Stonehaven Fireballs: Scotland Swings Fire on Hogmanay

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 09:00:00 +0000

At the last stroke of midnight on Hogmanay, roughly forty people walk up the High Street of Stonehaven with balls of fire spinning at the end of five feet of chain, and the whole town comes out to watch them do it. This is Aberdeenshire, the harbour town about fifteen miles south of Aberdeen, and this is how the north-east of Scotland decides to greet a new year — by carrying open flame through a crowd of thousands, in the dark, in the cold, with the North Sea slapping the harbour wall a hundred yards away.

Beltane Fire Festival: Edinburgh Wakes the Summer on Calton Hill

Sat, 30 Apr 2022 09:00:00 +0000

On the last night of April, a hill in the middle of Edinburgh fills with drums and torchlight and several hundred people painted red from the scalp down, and they spend the dark hours dragging summer up out of the ground by force. That is Beltane, and the strangest thing about it is how new it is. The rite it performs is old enough to be genuinely Celtic. The festival you can actually attend was built by a handful of art-punks in 1988, and I think that combination is exactly why it works.