The hymn pipes out at dawn from the golden tower, as the Magdalen Boy’s Choir welcomes spring to Oxford, England. The innocent soprano voices melt into the morning sky, as thousands of revelers fall silent below.
Many wear elegant ball gowns and tuxedos, rumpled from a riotous night of drink and dancing at a college ball. Some sport carnival costumes: fairy wings, masks, trailing ivy wreaths, togas, smears and sprinkles of glitter. Others appear bundled up, still bleary from bed, but game – even at six in the morning.
"Te adoramus, O Jesu," the boys carol in Latin, high pure voices trailing like river mist 144 feet above the crowd. A fellow of Magdalen College, part of the hallowed Oxford University, wrote the Hymnus Eucharisticus in the late 18th century. But the tradition stretches back much farther: In 1650, the city summoned Spring at the early-bird hour of 4:00 a.m.
Enthusiasm for this ancient tradition was revived by Richard Attenborough’s 1993 film Shadowlands, which depicted the bittersweet romance between children’s author and scholar C.S. Lewis and his cancer-stricken wife Joy. Over 11,000 people gather each year on May 1st, unperturbed by the event’s blithe mix of cassocked choir boys and fertility rituals; mystical music and drunken carnage.
Victorian artist William Holman Hunt emphasized the ethereal side of the event in his often-reproduced May Morning on Magdalen Tower. He omitted the tipsy undergraduates and their "youthful frolic", adding a mass of blossoms and, quite curiously, a Persian sun worshipper. Changes aside, the flowing painting captures the simple beauty of this festival.
Real-life doesn’t censor the frolic, however, and the crowd usually manages some mild hijinks. After all, May Morning misbehavior is a time-honored tradition. "Magdalen College men and the rabble of the towns came on May Day to their disturbance," complained a sixteenth-century local. Two hundred years later, spectators were regularly pelted with rotten eggs and other unpleasant missiles.
Today, partiers are more likely to strip naked and jump screeching into the river. A sozzled undergraduate first took the plunge 13 years ago. Others followed suit, including – most famously – student Jocelyn Witchard in 1995. She made a second topless splash in The Sun, a tabloid that paid her £1,000 for a Page Three pin-up photo.
Structural problems led officials to barricade the bridge on May morning from 1998–2001. The bulging and heaving crowds weakened the stone parapet of the historical structure, designed by John Gwynn in 1773.
Now the bridge is secure, reinforced by steel anchors, but The Thames Valley Police still discourage leapers. Twenty-two people were injured, some seriously, after jumping into the 4-foot-deep Cherwell River in 1994. A few years later, a male student dived off the parapet and suffered serious spinal injuries, which left him confined to a wheelchair.
Luckily, there’s plenty of opportunity for colorful self-expression without skinny-dipping in a grubby stream. When the choir’s last fluting note fades, 10 bells toll and the blinking clot of people begins shuffling up High Street, past the densest patch of Gothic architecture in the world, the ornate domes, spires, turrets and gargoyles of Oxford.
Policemen on prancing horses herd them along. "Move along now, people. That’s it. Go have a nice quiet pint," they cry. Many revelers do split off into the pubs – open by special dispensation – washing back mugs of lager and stout. Others opt for a proper artery-clogging English breakfast; eggs, beans, sausage, fried tomatoes and mushrooms, all soaking into fried bread and chips (fries – aka freedom or French, depending on your political stance).
Oxford’s city center is mobbed with maypoles, street theater, baroque music, jazz, barbershop quartets, Punch and Judy skits, parade floats and mobile discos. A paper machê unicorn puppet frolics, plunging its horn through a rose-festooned hoop, as the audience hoots bawdy innuendoes. A woman slices into a phallus-shaped cake, pressing frosting-smeared slices on timid revelers. And the Morris Men are everywhere, stamping and jingling and shouting.
These folk dancers wear vests swirling with patches and buttons, jaunty caps and clogs. Some strap bells down their shins, others flourish hankies. One especially rowdy routine involves the fierce clash of clubs. A women’s troupe – a historical oddity, but welcome in these PC times – reinterprets this number, punctuating the clatter of wood with high-pitched yips. The females of the species seem far more dangerous than the beer-swilling, bearded males, whose cheeks glow ham pink in the early light.
Another group pegs around a capering tree, which bumbles blindly on its leash. The person inside is completely obscured by evergreen bows, arms and legs bound tight under the greenery. A maiden is selected from the crowd – a country girl in cheap pastels – and pushed into the ring. Each Morris Man circles in for a peck on the cheek. She giggles and blushes.
The pine demands its due and flounders towards the lass. The crowd goes wild, cheering. "Tree, tree, give us a hug," sings a pack of undergraduates hanging off the wrought-iron library fence. Everyone takes up the chant: "Tree, give us a kiss! Treeeeee!"
Enthusiasts trace Morris dancing back hundreds of years to pagan fertility rituals (easy to believe as the lecherous tree corners the cooing girl: the scene isn’t exactly subtle). But scholars suspect a liberal amount of "reconstruction" went on in the 19th century. Whatever the source, Oxonians have made the vibrant tradition their own. And like the whole of May morning, it’s a little bit naughty, a little bit nice – and utterly charming.
Amanda Castleman is an award-winning freelance journalist specializing in travel, the environment and women’s issues.
Copyright 2005 Amanda Castleman. Reprinted with permission.