May Day Morning

[tree_and_leaf]

May Day in Oxford means chiefly one thing: getting up and over to stand below Magdalen tower, in order to listen to the choristers welcome in summer.

This year things were somewhat complicated (particularly for those deprived souls, like me, who live in East Oxford), thanks to a tradition of less antiquity which has grown up: that of jumping of Magdalen Bridge into the Charwell. Which sounds amusing until you realise that in much of that bit of the river, the depth is less that 3ft: last year there were an unreasonable number of serious injuries and the council decided to close the bridge.

However: I had, in fact, taken precautions and insured that I was on the right side of the bridge (blinking groggily). I got to the tower at about quarter to six; a large crowd had already gathered, including a party of jovial morris dancers and a man dressed up as Jack in the Green, although it's possible he was supposed to be a Christmas tree. Yet for all the pagan associations we tend to have with May Day, the Oxford ceremony at least begins as a Christina act of worship, though it's debatable how far the crowd is aware of this. Things were good tempered, though there were a number of people who looked distictly groggy, and though it was a grey and damp morning, the blossom trees by the Botanic Gardens proclaimed it spring beyond a doubt.

At six the clock chimed, and then the choirboys began to sing: the Hymnus Eucharisticus, which is used as a grace in the college on occasion, and the haunting tune to which was composed by a fellow, Benjamin Rogers (possibly in the eighteenth century). Using it to open the ceremony, though, is more than college pride: it celebrates, after all, God's prescence in matter and his involvement with the world, which is not a bad context for rejoicing in the gifts of nature. All terribly Franciscan, really, though of course the tradition is one of those typical immemorial Oxford things which originate in the nineteenth century!

There followed a brief prayer thanking God for the joy of summer and natural beauty, and then a peal - Stedmans, I think. The birds were waking up by now, and their calls mingled with the great solemn gladness of the bells. That always makes me want to cry.

After that, the choirboys metaphorically tossed aside their surplices, and sang madrigals. All very jolly - but I always value the first ten minutes most/

Here is a link to a rather over-wrought Holman-Hunt painting depicting events on the tower

http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/image.asp?id=11205