What better way to welcome in the summer than with festival of fire, food, music and pagan blessings?

Peel will be illuminated on Sunday afternoon and evening by the Oie Voaldyn celebrations, the Gaelic name for the eve of May day, with a torchlight procession, fire shows, a re-enactment of an age-old May Day ritual and a beach-front battle, fought between the seasons of summer and winter.

During the day, on Peel quayside, there will be live music and food, with demonstrations of old crafts, such as tying crosh curns, and there will also be Viking games to try.

The festivities are being organised by John Shakespeare, from the Vikings of Mann, and he is promising a spectacular night of fire and theatrics on the seafront.

’We had noticed that nothing much seem to happen on the island to do with Beltane, which is the Celtic festival, which takes place around May, and is known as Oie Voaldyn on the island,’ said John.

’But we wanted to do something particularly Manx, and there were no other festivals that seemed to be doing that.’

The high-point of the day’s celebrations will be a series of torchlight processions that will converge on the beach from different side of the harbour.

The processions will represent summer and winter, and members of the two sides will fight in a choreographed battle, organised by the Manx Vikings.

’We have a core of 150 people, and they will be fighting the battle between summer and winter, which is a tradition which has gone back hundreds, if not thousands of years on the Isle of Man,’ said John

’Of course, summer will win.’

A ’May Queen’, performed by Emma Wainright will offer blessings, and there will be the ritual running of animals through the smoke of the Beltane fires.

John stresses that they will not be using real animals for this part of the show.

The events will be narrated by John himself, and be backed by a rousing musical score.

’With this being the 2018 year of our island, we thought that it would be nice to try to do a festival, using this incredible landscape here at Peel and try and capture the Beltane, or Oie Voaldyn spirit,’ he said.

John said that anyone can join in with the torchlight parades, and torches can be purchased at £5 each, proceeds of which will be donated to Hospice Isle of Man.

The crafts and activities begin from 2pm on Sunday, May 6, and the torchlit procession and fire show begins from 8.30pm. The evening will finish off with a firework show at 10pm.

by Mike Wade

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