May Morning, Oxford

At the start, it was like stepping out into a poem. The air was cold and the morning sky still dark as ink above the rooftops and chimneys, with a fading white sliver of moon. My daughter and her husband waited for us outside the flat where we were staying, and all four of us, bundled up in scarves and heavy jackets, walked up the street towards the center of town. Many others were also up and out, dribbling from the side streets to converge along the Cowley Road, their numbers increasing as we drew closer to the Magdalen Bridge. There was something magical and incongruous about this procession, friends and strangers walking in the pre-dawn hour, drawn like pilgrims to the same event. The mundane streets were transformed, and it seemed ancient and mysterious, oddly exciting.

I kept thinking of these lines from a favorite poem of mine (by Alden Nowlan) called "Great Things Have Happened": Oh, but we were silly with sleepiness and, under our windows, the street-cleaners were working their machines and conversing in Italian, and everything was strange without being threatening, even the tea-kettle whistled differently than in the daytime: it was like the feeling you get sometimes in a country you've never visited before, when the bread doesn't taste quite the same, the butter is a small adventure, and they put paprika on the table instead of pepper, except that there was nobody in this country except the three of us, half-tipsy with the wonder of being alive, and wholly enveloped in love.

Yes, that's how it was. We were all silly with sleepiness, and everything was strange without being threatening. But then the mood began to shift, because in this country, there were way more than the three or four of us. In fact there were soon hundreds of people clogging the Magdalen Bridge, many of whom were for sure half-tipsy but not necessarily with the wonder of being alive. I began to feel claustrophobic and curmudgeonly as the crowds pushed and shoved.

May Morning in Oxford is a tradition that goes back over five hundred years. It officially begins at 6 a.m. with the Magdalen College Choir singing the Hymnus Eucharisticus from the top of Magdalen Tower. People gather under the tower along the High Street and on the Magdalen Bridge, which is as far as we were able to get. After the singing come festivities of all sorts, including music, Morris dancing, and generalized revelry.

But for now (as you will have seen from the video if you clicked the link above) we were standing on the bridge awaiting the singing, and when it began, it was haunting and lovely, especially at moments when there weren't loud voices talking over it, or people knocking against me in their efforts to get closer or walk back in the opposite direction.

I'm a country girl with city origins, singularly ill-equipped to deal gracefully with such situations. My rural sensibility starts sending panic signals: Too many people! I need some space! My urban instincts meanwhile render me paranoid and irritated, and not so willing to endure it in silence.

"Seriously?" I asked in an intentionally audible whisper. "Why are these people even here if they don't have the respect and courtesy to shut up, stand still for a few minutes, and listen to the choir?" I was a teacher for many years too, and my comment may have contained a touch of instructor tone.

"Well, to be fair," explained my son-in-law, a long-time Oxford local, "some of them are drunk.""

That explains it," I replied. "Drunk means a-holes on steroids."I said a-holes, using the letter "a" instead of the word "ass", perhaps out of some vaguely British restraint, but still. I said it in a crabby mutter while a string of noisy youths were elbowing through the crowd in which most of us were already immobilized with barely enough room to breathe. All the while the singing in the tower continued, the singing that I imagined as distant angel voices, sweet and elusive.

But now my daughter was mad at me, surprisingly protective of the drunken revelers, her ire directed exclusively towards her mean, judgmental mother. And I felt...well, maybe a teeny bit contrite, but mostly hurt. Why can she never take my side? Why can she not feel a little empathy for her weary mother, still discombobulated by travel, sleep-deprived, out of her element, and not exactly young? I'd fallen out of the poem. I just wanted to get off that damned bridge.

We made peace, my daughter and me, or drifted back into it, as we do. She and I are prone to sparks and outbursts, fierce words and feelings, but love is the foundation, and I'm pretty sure that's a constant. When the singing concluded, the great river of people slowly moved forward along the bridge to the High Street and spread out in the center of the city. It was still ridiculously early, but daylight now, and a party atmosphere prevailed. There were people in flower wreaths, glitter, and costumes, and there was trash all over the streets, and fiddle playing and dancing, and long lines for coffee. It was a happening.

And I am now a woman who has been to May Morning in Oxford. I'm glad I went. But I'll not likely ever go again.

I have since found another poem worth sharing for May Morning, this one by Vera Brittain (1893-1970) written specifically about the event in the early part of the 20th century, and the darkness, loss and heartache of the First World War that came soon after. She wrote:

The rising sun shone warmly on the tower; Into the clear pure heaven the hymn aspired, Piercingly sweet. This was the morning hour When life awoke with spring’s creative power, And the old city’s grey to gold was fired. Silently reverent stood the noisy throng; Under the bridge the boats in long array Lay motionless. The choristers’ far song Faded upon the breeze in echoes long. Swiftly I left the bridge and rode away. Straight to a little wood’s green heart I sped, Where cowslips grew, beneath whose gold withdrawn The fragrant earth peeped warm and richly red; All trace of winter’s chilling touch had fled, And song-birds ushered in the year’s bright morn. I had met Love not many days before, And as in blissful mood I listening lay None ever had of joy so full a store. I thought that spring must last for evermore, For I was young and loved, and it was May.

This is me again, inserting myself right in the middle of Vera Brittain's poem, wondering if I should include it in its entirety, because it does go on, but in a tone far removed from the sweetness and innocence of the long-ago May Morning of which she speaks. As the terrible war escalated, our young poet delayed her degree at Oxford to volunteer as a nurse. Her fiancé, two close friends, and beloved brother Edward were all killed in the war. She became a writer and lifelong activist for peace. And so her poem concludes:

Now it is May again, and sweetly clear Perhaps once more aspires the Latin hymn From Magdalen tower, but not for me to hear. I toil far distant, for a darker year Shadows the century with menace grim. I walk in ways where pain and sorrow dwell, And ruin such as only War can bring, Where each lives through his individual hell, Fraught with remembered horror none can tell, And no more is there glory in the spring. And I am worn with tears, for he I loved Lies cold beneath the stricken sod of France; Hope has forsaken me, by death removed, And Love that seemed so strong and gay has proved A poor crushed thing, the toy of cruel chance. Often I wonder, as I grieve in vain, If when the long, long future years creep slow, And War and tears alike have ceased to reign, I ever shall recapture, once again, The mood of that May Morning, long ago.

It is May again indeed and now still May, and I am back home where the hills have gone from green to maize. I am getting myself reoriented, still baffled by the distances we cover in so little time, by how big the world is and how small, by how relentlessly things change but remain the same. Reporting back to Vera from the future: war and tears alike have not ceased to reign. But there is both promise and fear in this springtime. We try to harbor hope.

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