writer informs us that in the parish of Kirkmichael, which adjoins the parish of Logierait on the east, the custom of lighting a fire in the fields and baking a consecrated cake on the first of May was not quite obsolete in his time.[375] We may conjecture that the cake with knobs was formerly used for the purpose of determining who should be the “Beltane carline” or victim doomed to the flames.  A trace of this custom survived, perhaps, in the custom of baking oatmeal cakes of a special kind and rolling them down hill about noon on the first of May; for it was thought that the person whose cake broke as it rolled would die or be unfortunate within the year.  These cakes, or bannocks as we call them in Scotland, were baked in the usual way, but they were washed over with a thin batter composed of whipped egg, milk or cream, and a little oatmeal.  This custom appears to have prevailed at or near Kingussie in Inverness-shire.  At Achterneed, near Strathpeffer in Ross-shire, the Beltane bannocks were called tcharnican or hand-cakes, because they were kneaded entirely in the hand, and not on a board or table like common cakes; and after being baked they might not be placed anywhere but in the hands of the children who were to eat them.[376]

[Beltane fires in the north-east of Scotland to burn the witches; the Beltane cake.]

In the north-east of Scotland the Beltane fires were still kindled in the latter half of the eighteenth century; the herdsmen of several farms used to gather dry wood, kindle it, and dance three times “southways” about the burning pile.[377] But in this region, according to a later authority, the Beltane fires were lit not on the first but on the second of May, Old Style.  They were called bone-fires.  The people believed that on that evening and night the witches were abroad and busy casting spells on cattle and stealing cows’ milk.  To counteract their machinations, pieces of rowan-tree and woodbine, but especially of rowan-tree, were placed over the doors of the cow-houses, and fires were kindled by every farmer and cottar.  Old thatch, straw, furze, or broom was piled in a heap and set on fire a little after sunset.  While some of the bystanders kept tossing the blazing mass, others hoisted portions of it on pitchforks or poles and ran hither and thither, holding them as high as they could.  Meantime the young people danced round the fire or ran through the smoke shouting, “Fire! blaze and burn the witches; fire! fire! burn the witches.”  In some districts a large round cake of oat or barley meal was rolled through the ashes.  When all the fuel was consumed, the people scattered the ashes far and wide, and till the night grew quite dark they continued to run through them, crying, “Fire! burn the witches."[378]

[Beltane cakes and fires in the Hebrides.]