BELFAST – Traditional music, cheese-rolling, wheel-barrow and kilt races, dancing, fireworks and Highland games will be just a part of the happenings at this weekend’s Maine Celtic Celebration.

The four-day event runs July 17-20. It will take place at the city’s downtown waterfront parks with most of the action centered on Heritage Park and Belfast Common. It will start with a benefit barbecue on Thursday night and wrap up Sunday afternoon and evening with a Celtic jam session on the common. All of the events are free.

“It’s the kind of event that fits Belfast’s character and we’re looking for a big crowd,” said festival committee member Bob MacGregor. “This is our second year and we have a lot more fun and activities planned.”

If last year’s inaugural festival can be any gauge, the wildly popular cheese-rolling contest is bound to liven up the crowd again. It will begin at noon Saturday on the common and will feature teams of men, women and children. Contestants form a line at the bottom of the grassy hill and scramble after a wheel of cheese – donated by State of Maine Cheese Co. – as it is rolled down from the top. The person who manages to capture the cheese gets to keep it.

“For the adults, it’s pretty much like rugby,” MacGregor said.

Another contest added this year is the Molly Malone Wheelbarrow Race. Two-person teams – one in the barrow, the other pushing – must navigate a slalom course while singing the Irish ditty “Dublin’s Fair City” and gathering muscles. It will take place in Heritage Park at 1:30 p.m. Friday, July 18.

“I’m sure the singing will be interesting,” said MacGregor.

The Kilted Run and Row will require contestants to make a kilt, run through the grounds to the city’s dinghy dock, climb aboard a boat and row around a boat moored in the harbor and return to the starting line. That race will take place at 1:30 p.m. Sunday.

There will be a tin whistle and other workshops, demonstrations, chess matches, vendors, lessons on Irish and Scottish genealogy, as well as children’s activities, including a dog show, on the grounds throughout the festival.

There will be a tug of war on the mud flats at low tide at 5:30 p.m. Friday and a parade at 10 a.m. Saturday that will begin at Waterfall Arts on High Street, turn left on Main and conclude at the Public Landing. The Cod Toss Relay will take place at 2:30 p.m. Saturday on the common. A gala fireworks show will blast off at dark Saturday night.

The playing fields of the former Anderson School will be site for Sunday’s lineup of Highland Heavy Games, which will begin at 8:30 a.m. and run well into the afternoon.

Throughout the weekend participants can hear a wide range of Celtic and traditional music from such performers Spare Shilling at 7 p.m. Saturday at the Boathouse, Ladies of the Lake, the Flying Scotsman, Ferg N’ Sons, Napper Tandies and Bohola on Friday, the Flying Scotsman, Ferg N’ Sons, Pub Crawlers, Irish Ceili, Bohola and the Maine St. Andrews Pipes and Drums on Saturday and Bohola, Prydein, Castlebay and the closing Sessiun, or Celtic music jam, on Sunday.

You probably shouldn’t have a Celtic festival without beer and Three Tides Brewery has crafted a special Manx Mild for just the occasion.

The beer will be available at Three Tides and other downtown restaurants as well as at the festival’s benefit barbecue that will be held at the Boathouse on Steamboat Landing at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, July 17. For more information on tickets to the barbecue and performance schedules, visit mainecelticcelebration.com.