“Beltane”: A bid to understand Marc Bolan’s strange lyrical obsession
Many writers have strange quirks. While David Bowie was obsessed with space, Paul Simon liked to keep his feet planted firmly on the American continent, and spotting these consistencies can be one of the things that makes being a fan so exciting.
Marc Bolan, the English singer-songwriter, guitarist, and poet, had one word that acted as a continual point of return in much of his written rumination. The word has fallen out of usage, but luckily for us, the Internet still exists, or, worst case, there’s always a battered, dusty dictionary to pull out of the corner of your grandmother’s loft.
Beltane: an ancient Celtic festival celebrated on May Day, with a name that means ‘bright fire’ or ‘fire of Bel’ after a Celtic deity. This very pagan festival, centring purification, fertility, and the union of the earth and the sun, arose in his work more than once. The word can be most easily spotted in the song title ‘Beltane Walk’ from his self-titled album released in 1970. He also easily churns out “Ride a white swan like the people of the Beltane”, in the track ‘Ride a White Swan’, imbuing the bizarre word’s heightened importance by tacking it tactfully to the title phrase.
Another example comes from the 1972 track ‘Blessed Wild Apple Girl’, which was produced by Tony Visconti. On the track, Bolan gets right into the heart of the matter, singing, “Gypsy Girl, oh twisty pearl / Sat upon the stoney pale mare / Beltane Eve, by the fires you grieve / With your deep Babylonian hair”.
This latter example takes the exact imagery of what the whimsical festival might have been like, and sings it into wistful romanticism. Of course, Bolan did his research: in the very first recorded use of the word in Cormac’s Glossary, hailing from 9th to 10th-century Ireland, a Beltane was described as a time when Druids would light two fires and drive cattle between them, with the gypsy girl both a recognisable symbol in Bolan’s 1970s and in ancient Gaelic history.
All high art aims to draw our attention to the connection between timeless lore and that very modern moment, reminding us, ultimately, of our shared humanity, and all those attempting to emulate high art might try their hand at such a difficult fusion, and here we have just that.
The curious use of Beltane is always sure to pull off that glam-rock mysticism, the entanglement of the timelessly spiritual and ancient with the sound of the future as characterised by T Rex‘s shimmering psychedelic glamour. It works all the better when you consider the band’s early foray into folk-rock, which was less universally adored, but if any genre can hone a musician’s writing skills, it’s folk.
Over his time, Bolan allowed himself to have fun writing lyrics, like in the carefree ‘Jeepster’ or in the racing ’20th Century Boy’. But when the candle was burnt to its final stump, and the audience rang out no more, Bolan used the strange festival as a way to leave his stamp on the bridge between the past and the future.
