Oie Voaldyn

09/11/2024

05/10/2024

26/08/2024

The next Oie Voaldyn Fire Festival sponsored by Element Isle Jewellers will take place on Sunday 4th May 2025 - save the date!!!!

09/05/2024

Press launch today at the lovely shop in Tynwald Mills. Put a note in your diaries for 4th May 2025 - Oie Voaldyn Fire Festival is back!

09/05/2024

We're super excited to share with you the news that we are the sponsor for the 2025 Oie Voaldyn Festival. It's been a highlight of the calendar for us as a family, and for us to now be able to be part of it feels very special indeed. Not only that, but as a business our designs draw inspiration from our landscape, heritage and culture, and the importance of this celebration is very much part of the tapestry of the Island - something to celebrate and enjoy for generations to come.

We look forward to working with John and the rest of the incredible team of volunteers at Isle of Man Fire & Folklore Festivals, and be sure to mark your calendars now..... 4th May 2025 - its going to be amazing!

07/05/2024

07/05/2024

On Saturday night the Oie Voaldyn team were pleased to add some fun to the Peel Castle Sleepover organised by Breast Cancer Now. Thank you for asking us and hope you have raised much needed funds

01/05/2024

Last night members of the Oie Voaldyn team met on Fenella Beach to celebrate Oie Voaldyn and officially welcome summer. We also held a blessing for peace & harmony - the song we are singing is Shee Eriu - Peace be on you

28/04/2024

It's almost time to burn the buitch...

Fire is one of the oldest and most important Manx traditions for keeping safe at the end of April, on the most dangerous night of the year, Oie Voaldyn.

The tradition of 'burning the buitch' at Oie Voaldyn (30 April) go back as far as records go, with the key element being a fire (normally of gorse) on your land, or on your property, to drive out evil and to keep you and your family, livestock and possessions safe into the coming year.
This is especially important at this bridge point between the winter and the summer halves of the year, when you are most open to having your luck turned, or thrown off course by others.

Our short film about this tradition, going out to burn the buitch with three traditional practitioners at Oie Voaldyn 2019, is available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJV0zZf2zM0&list=PLB95FuN2S6jP3yfAjP7fSgakoXHMDEFof&index=1
Gura mie mooar eu, Lenny, Mona & Gill.

More about the tradition and the fascinating story of how it fits into the wider Boaldyn folklore is available here (particularly through the pdfs at the bottom of the page, compiled by Stephen Miller RBV):
https://culturevannin.im/manxfolklore/boaldyn-475492/

PLEASE NOTE:
If you are interested to Burn the Buitch on your own land, please take extreme care, please be considerate of neighbours, please only have a small fire (just a small branch is enough!), but, if the fire is of any significant size, please inform the Emergency Services Joint Control Room (tel 697327) before you start.
More information from the IOM Fire & Rescue Service is available here: https://www.facebook.com/iomfire

20/02/2024

Hi Everyone - just a sad note to say that we will not be holding this years festival as we have not raised sufficient funds to cover all the overheads and infrastructure costs. Maybe 2025? If you know of any generous sponsors!

13/01/2024

We have some fantastic acts announced for Laa’l Breeshey! Entry by donation - absolute bargain! Come & join us! 😁 🎻 🎶

01/05/2023

Hurray!
Today is the most joyous day of the traditional Manx year;
Happy Laa Boaldyn!

The winter is behind us, the terrible threats of evil influences of last night are over, and all we have before us today is a celebration of the start of summer!
Yindyssagh!

Traditionally, Manx people would gather on the village greens to take part in a mock battle between the forces of summer and winter. And after summer emerged victorious, everyone set to enjoying music, dance, games and feasting...

A lovely description of this in Castletown comes from Dr John Clague's 'Manx Reminscences' (1911):

"On May Day a great feast was held in Castletown, and people from every part of the Island used to come in their holiday clothes.
A sham fight was held, a sign of the fight between summer and winter.
The summer company of ladies and gentlemen was led by the prettiest young woman, she was called the Queen of Summer; and the winter party of working men and working women were dressed in a q***r way, and in any way they liked, for fun and play, and the leader was called the King of Winter.
The winter party was driven by the summer party on the road to Scarlett, and when they reached as far as Scarlett, the fight was over, a sign that the sun had gone down in the west.
Then the company had meat and drink, and after that there was dancing and games of every kind.
They used to get as many fiddlers as they could, and people who were acquainted with each other made themselves into small companies, and enjoyed the company of each other in the best way they could."
[Available in full courtesy of Chiollagh Books: https://chiollaghbooks.com/chiollaghbooks/]

More about the Manx traditions of Boaldyn can be found here: https://culturevannin.im/manxfolklore/boaldyn-475492/

We hope you are celebrating the start of summer wherever you are today (preferably without fighting!)
Sourey aboo!

26/04/2023

Do you have one of these yet?

This is a crosh cuirn, which is needed to protect the luck or prosperity of your household and those who live within it on the evening before 1 May..
Making it is very easy, fun and very much recommended!

The instructions are pretty simple...

1) Break off two small pieces of rowan branches (the mountain ash tree, or billey cuirn in Manx), without using a knife or any other metal implement.
2) Hold the two branches together as a cross (if you've fresh small twigs, you might open up the bark of one of them and push the other through).
3) Bind them together with some wool which has not been touched by any metal (this includes wool cut by scissors from the sheep) - the best place to get this is from gorse in the hedgerows.
4) Put the completed crosh cuirn up over your front door not touching metal (perhaps hung by string, or, in our modern age, stuck with sellotape!)

Our short How To video from last year for making a crosh cuirn is here:
https://youtu.be/UDZyBEsdq4o

The Manx version of this can be found here: https://youtu.be/0CO39IKx1OI

More about this, the other Oie Voaldyn traditions, and how they fit into the wider celebrations of the end of the winter half of the year and the start of the summer, is here:
https://culturevannin.im/manxfolklore/boaldyn-475492/

24/04/2023

The (soon-to-be) dead are going to be visible this evening...

It is Oie Noo Markys (St. Mark’s Eve), when the border between this world and the next is very thin, and we can glimpse something of a world normally inaccessible to us.
Indeed, tonight, the souls of those who are to die in the coming year will leave their bodies and we can catch a glimpse of these souls wandering around, if we are there ready watching between 11pm and 1am from the door of the local church...

More about this, and the film we made a few years ago with Dr Fenella Bazin RBV, can be found here:
https://culturevannin.im/manxfolklore/oie-noo-markys-527773/

14/04/2023

A new family-friendly Oie Voaldyn event for the end of the month:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1184678108916656

Because the ever-brilliant festival isn't happening on Peel shore this year, there is a smaller family-friendly event being organised in its stead:

Oie Voaldyn in St John's
Sunday 30th April, 4pm-7pm
Methodist Hall, Main Road, St John’s.
Expect craft workshops, face-painting, story-telling, a costume contest, a (controlled!) battle between Summer & Winter, music, dance, and procession around St John's at the end to round it all off!
A wonderful way to celebrate the coming of Summer with the family!

More information is available on the page:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1184678108916656

More about the traditions of Oie Voaldyn & Laa Boaldyn can be found here: https://culturevannin.im/manxfolklore/boaldyn-475492/

21/03/2023

The next Oie Voaldyn Festival will take place next year on 5th May 2024 - we look forward to seeing you all then - save the date in your diaries!