V. Olden Customs and Ceremonies
May-Day Carol on Magdalen College Tower
Way customs are nothing more than a gratulation of the spring, to testify universal joy at the revival of vegetation. Hence the universality of the practice; and its festivities being inspired by the gay face of Nature, they are as old as any we have on record. There is at Oxford a May-day ceremony which has a special claim upon our respect and veneration, for nearly four centuries.
Upon the majestic Perpendicular tower of Magdalen College we have many time and oft looked with reverential feeling: seen from every point, it delights the eye with its stately form, fine proportions, and admirable simplicity; and with its history is associated a May-day custom of surpassing interest. For more than three centuries and a half the choristers of the College have assembled upon the top of its tower on a May-day morning, and there performed a most harmonious service, the origin of which has been thus traced by the learned Dr. Rimbault.
In the year 1501, the “most Christian” King Henry VII. gave to Magdalen College the advowsons of the churches of Slymbridge, in Gloucestershire, and Fyndon, in Sussex, together with one acre of land in each parish. In gratitude for this benefaction, the College was accustomed, during the lifetime of the royal benefactor, to celebrate a service in honour of the Holy Trinity, with the collect still used on Trinity Sunday; and the prayer, “Almighty and everlasting God, we are taught by Thy word that the heart of kings,” &c.; and, after the death of the King, to commemorate him in the usual manner.
The Commemoration Service ordered in the time of Queen Elizabeth, is still performed on the 1st of May; when is sung on the College-tower a Latin hymn, which has evidently reference to the original service. The produce of the two acres before-mentioned used to be distributed on the same day, between the President and Fellows: it has, however, for many years been given up, to supply the choristers with a festal entertainment in the College-hall.
The arrangement of the ceremony is as follows. At about half-past four o’clock in the morning, the singing boys and men, accompanied by members of Magdalen and different colleges, ascend to the platform of the tower; and the choristers, having put on their surplices, range themselves on the slightly-gabled roof, standing with their faces towards the east. Magdalen bell having tolled five, the choristers sing from their books the Latin hymn, of which the following is a translation:—
“Father and God, we worship Thee,
And praise and bless on bended knee:
With food Thou’rt to our bodies kind,
With heavenly grace dost cheer the mind.
“O, Jesus, only Son of God!
Thee we adore, and praise, and laud:
Thy love did not disdain the gloom
Of a pure Virgin’s holy womb.
“Nail’d to the cross, a victim made,
On Thee the wrath of God was laid:
Our only Saviour, now by Thee
Immortal life we hope to see.
“To Thee, Eternal Spirit, rise
Unceasing praise, from earth and skies:
Thy breath awoke the heavenly Child,
And gave Him to His mother mild.
“To Thee, the Triune God, be paid—
To Thee, who our redemption made—
All honour, thanks, and praise divine,
For this great mystery of Thine!”
At the close of the hymn, all heads are covered, and the singers hasten to the belfry, whence the bells ring out a joyful peal. The spectators in the road beneath disperse, the boys blowing tin horns, according to ancient custom, to welcome in sweet May; while others ramble into the fields to gather cowslips and field flowers, which they bring into the town. Occasionally the singing on the tower has been heard, with a favourable wind, at two miles’ distance. This being a “gaudy day” for the choristers, they have a dinner of roast lamb and plum-pudding in the College-hall at two o’clock. There is a good representation of the ceremony on the tower, carefully engraved by Joseph Lionel Williams, in the Illustrated London News, whence the accompanying representation has been reduced.
Dr. Rimbault, whilst making some researches in the library of Christchurch, Oxford, discovered what appeared to him to be the first draft of the above hymn. It has the following note:—“This hymn is sung every day in Magdalen College Hall, Oxon, dinner and supper throughout the year, for the after grace, by the chaplains, clerks, and choristers there. Composed by Benjamin Rogers, Doctor of Musicke of the University of Oxon, 1685.” The author of the hymn is unknown.
At Oxford, formerly, boys used to blow cows’-horns and hollow canes all night, to welcome in May-day; and girls carried about garlands of flowers, which afterwards they hung upon the churches.
Before we leave the sacred ground whereon this holy May-day ceremony is, year by year, performed, we present the reader with a very ably-drawn picture of the locality itself, and its many attractions.
“Probably,” says a writer in the Saturday Review, “there is no city in the United Kingdom, with the exception of the metropolis, which possesses such a concentration of interest as Oxford. Its historical associations are spread over a long succession of ages. Not to speak of more apocryphal reminiscences, it was a favourite residence of one of our monarchs, and the birthplace of another. It was the scene of important transactions in the troubled reign of Stephen, and witnessed an episode in the equally troubled reign of the third Henry. It beheld the seeds of the Reformation sown by Wycliff, and saw the martyrdom of Cranmer and his fellow-sufferers. It became a confessor for the Church of England as against Puritanism under the second Stuart, and as against Popery under the fourth. It has been, at least since the Reformation, a sort of head-quarters of that Church; and has witnessed, in our own day, the most remarkable theological convulsions which it has experienced since the Reformation. Its outward appearance is in keeping with its history. It bears traces of the architecture of eight centuries—from the rude belfry-tower of St. Michael’s, which has been assigned on good authority to the age of the Confessor, to Mr. Scott’s exquisite imitation of the Sainte Chapelle, in its immediate neighbourhood. It is true that it contains no building of the first rank; but it exhibits an almost infinite variety, under the influence of accidental yet harmonious grouping, which has a charm more akin to that of nature than that of art. In its æsthetical as well as in its moral aspect, it betrays a strong spirit of Conservatism, and, occasionally, one of studied Revivalism. We see in Oxford the shadow of the Middle Ages projected far into the region of modern life. A College is a strange compound, half club, half convent, and its daily usages are curiously intermingled with the past. For two centuries after the Reformation, Protestant founders cast their institutions in the mould of Wykeham and Waynflete: the scholastic system appears to have been a living thing at the beginning of the last century, and its ghost still haunts the academic shades. These facts have their parallel in the architecture of Oxford. The revival of mediæval art, which we have ourselves witnessed, had its precursors here in the early part of the seventeenth century. Nowhere in England—we may almost say, nowhere in Europe—shall we find such good and pure Gothic, built at a time when the style was defunct elsewhere, as is presented by the Chapels of Wadham, Lincoln, and Jesus Colleges, and in the staircase of Christchurch Hall; and as was to be seen in the chapel of Exeter College, before its destruction.
“With such attractions, added to that of personal interest, arising out of the past or in direct connexion with the place, it is no wonder that Oxford, at the most pleasant season of the year, draws to itself crowds of visitors from all parts of the country. The only wonder is, that it is not even more popular than it is, when we consider the throngs of English men and women who are to be met with in the dingy and unsavoury Colleges of continental cities from June till October.”
At Saffron Wolden, and in the village of Debden, an old May-day song is still sung by the little girls, who go about in parties carrying garlands from door to door. The first stanza is to be repeated after each of the others by way of chorus:—
“I, I been a rambling all this night,
And some part of this day,
And, now returning back again,
I brought you a garland gay.
“A garland gay I brought you here,
And at your door I stand;
’Tis nothing but a sprout, but ’tis well budded out,
The works of our Lord’s hand.
“Why don’t you do as I have done
The very first day of May?
And from my parents I have come,
And could no longer stay.
“So dear, so dear as Christ loved us,
And for our sins was slain,
Christ bids us turn from wickedness,
And turn to the Lord again.”
The garlands which the girls carry are sometimes large and handsome, and a doll is usually placed in the middle, dressed in white, according to certain traditional regulations: this doll represents the Virgin Mary, and is a relic of the ages of Romanism.
The May-pole still lingers in the village of St. Briavel’s, in the picturesque forest of Dean. In the village of Burley in the New Forest, a May-pole is erected, a fête given to the school children, and a May-queen is chosen by lots; a floral crown surmounts the pole, and garlands of flowers hang about the shaft. Among other late instances are recorded a May-pole, eighty feet high, on the village-green of West Dean, Wilts, in 1836; and in 1844, there was “dancing round the May-pole” in St. James’s district, Enfield. William Howitt describes May-poles in the village of Lisby, near Newstead; and in Farnsfield, near Southwell, Derbyshire, May-poles are to be seen. Dr. Parr was a great patron of May-day festivities: opposite his parsonage-house at Hatton, near Warwick, stood the parish May-pole, which was annually dressed with garlands, and the doctor danced with his parishioners around the shaft. He kept its large crown in a closet of his house, from whence it was produced every May-day, and decorated with fresh flowers and streamers, preparatory to its elevation to the top of the pole.
On May-day and December 26th, is distributed the fund bequeathed in 1717 and 1736, by Mr. Raine, a wealthy brewer at St. George’s-in-the-East, who founded schools and a hospital for girls, and added marriage portions of 100l., to be drawn by lots: the winner is married to a young man, of St. John’s, Wapping, or St. Paul’s, Shadwell; the couple dine with their friends, and in the evening an ode is sung, and the marriage portion of one hundred new sovereigns is presented to the bride.
Miss Baker, in her Northamptonshire Glossary, tells us that there are very few villages in that county where the May-day Festival is not noticed in some way or other.