BELT, Great, and Little Belt, two straits which connect the Baltic Sea with the Cattegat. The former, with a depth of from 5 to 20 fathoms, and a breadth of about 15 miles, runs, from S.S.E. to N.N.W., between the islands of Zealand and Fünen; while the Little Belt, which is only about half as wide, with a narrow entrance from the Cattegat, separates Fünen from the mainland of Schleswig. The navigation of both is rather dangerous for large vessels, owing to the number of sandbanks and small islands; and on that account the Sound, which lies to the east, is the channel preferred by shipping.

BELTANE, or Beltein, a festival originally common to all the Celtic peoples, of which traces were to be found in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland down to the beginning of the present century. The name is compounded of bel or beal, the Celtic god of light, and tin or teine, meaning fire. The principal Beltane celebration was held annually in the beginning (generally on the first day) of May, though the name is also applied to a similar festival which occurred in the beginning of November. According to Cormac, archbishop of Cashel about the year 908, who furnishes the earliest notice of Beltane, it was customary to kindle, in very close proximity, two fires, between which both men and cattle were driven, under the belief that health was thereby promoted and disease warded off. (See Transactions of the Irish Academy, xiv. pp. 100; 122, 123.) Of the celebration in more recent times an account is given by Armstrong in his Gaelic Dictionary, s. v. “Bealtainn.” The whole subject is fully treated by J. Grimm in his Deτctsche Mythologie, c. xx.