May Day! May Day! Not a plea for emergency rescue: in Oxford it’s a call to revelry and celebration, a summons from on high!
As dawn breaks crowds begin to gather, many of them still reeling from the excitations of the previous evening. Their focus is the mighty tower of Magdalen College, with its soaring octagonal turrets and mock battlements, over five hundred years old and still the tallest building in Oxford.
At 6 a.m. a knot of surpliced choristers emerges onto the roof of the tower, 172 steps and 144 feet up. The Hymnus Eucharisticus is sung. There is cheering far below.
Now is the month of May! The blossom is bursting through in a champagne rush! Let the Mayhem commence!
Ignorants, atheists, papists, drunkards, swearers, swash-bucklers, maid marions, morris dancers, maskers, mummers, maypole stealers, health drinkers, gamesters, lewd men and light women!
Thus Thomas Hall described the motley assemblage in his Funebria florae, the downfall of May games (1660), an apoplectic rant against all things pagan (Flora being the Roman goddess of flowers) and Popish (Flora also being, according to Hall, a ‘whore of the city of Rome, in the county of Babylon’).
Four centuries later the crowds are altogether better behaved; but still there is a palpable spirit of misrule and playfulness in the air.
Once upon a time, celebrants might have staggered into punts to continue their revels, or balanced precariously on Magdalen Bridge before jumping into the river (forty had to be attended by paramedics in the drought year of 2005 when the water was only two feet deep.) These days less dangerous sport can be had by observing the Morrismen (and more than a few Morriswomen) playing out their strange dance – another peculiarly English tradition which was revived in Oxford.
Stop a moment. Can you hear the sound of the Morris through the noise of the crowd? There it is – fiddles, squeezebox, a rhythmic tabor drum marking out the beat … and, floating above it all, the jingling of bells and clacking of sticks, as the dancers skip and prance their strange choreography.
While you’re at it, why not head for a maypole if there’s one to hand? Or do a spot of madrigal singing? Or bop along to the ‘Horns of Plenty’ in their splendid red attire, instruments gleaming in the morning sunlight? Or indulge in a spot of light refreshment in one of the many pubs whose doors open considerately early to mark the occasion.
Or grab something (or someone) green and leafy? …
‘Summer is a comin’ in!’ …
Garlands galore to Stephen Foote for the photos, and to Ariel Dempsey for the twirling magic
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Gathering in public on May Morn was forbidden in the years of Lockdown. Nothing daunted, this video was produced by the good people of Magdalen College. Tradition will out. The sap must rise!
For those who don’t wish to set an early morning alarm, The Rose and Crown has, for nearly forty years, hosted a May Day Morris-fest which starts at noon. Andrew Hall, its legendary proprietor, recalls:
It hasn’t always been easy. These days the road is formally closed to motor vehicles; but in the early years we had to try to block off North Parade by hand. So I would stand at the top of the Woodstock Road waving cars away while brandishing a home-made placard saying: ‘Road Obstruction’!
There’s a painting by Glenn Badham on the wall beside the bar …
The composer and conductor James Whitbourne, late of St Edmund Hall, recalls:
For three years, I was one of those who sleepily and silently climbed the steeply spiralling steps, negotiated the final ladder and emerged into the suddenly bracing rooftop of the great bell tower of Magdalen College. From there, I looked down with my fellow choir members over the huge crowds waiting below. Some had been up all night; others had awoken at a time when they were thoroughly unaccustomed to being awake. But on the top of Oxford’s tallest medieval tower, it is no longer possible to feel sleepy. Even if the air at ground level seems calm, the wind moves differently at the top, and since the sun has had no chance to exert its warmth, heat generated by the climb of 172 steps is quickly lost.
The romance of the occasion is perfectly evoked by the Pre-Raphaelite, William Holman Hunt (1827-1910) in his glorious painting ‘May Morning on Magdalen Tower’, which he created following his own May Morning experience at the top of the tower in 1888.
Andrew Turner writes:
I have lived in Oxford for most of my 60+ years, but I am ashamed to say I had never experienced May Morning until now, 2025. I was there at the crack of dawn. What a magical atmosphere – and a uniquely Oxford celebration which should not be missed. Only 12 more months to wait for the next one!
