Armed with the three and a half hours (and even less, for some of my compatriots) of dead, alcohol-fuelled sleep, we made our way across Magdalen Bridge as the grog and weariness lingered stubbornly in our bodies. That awful feeling, that sense of piercing, vacuum-like emptiness in one’s stomach - that was the prominent sensation I had. It was a distinctly unpromising morning, suffused with the smell of weak rain; all activity occurred against a backdrop of large, impenetrable grey clouds. I do not know what thoughts were churning in the washing machine of my mind at this point, because the memory of later events have dominated. I say ‘events’, but perhaps what I mean ‘sensation’ or ‘experience’ - I’ll let you decide.

Amongst the crowds that had gathered we waited and spoke aimlessly. I think we were frankly perplexed, our tired, unquestioning minds sieged by the bizarre silliness of tradition. The crowd was smoking, drunk, irreverent, tired, unwashed and intimidating; I found them incomprehensible. What were they expecting on May Morning? What did they expect to see and hear, and what did they expect to feel? I have circulated these questions about my mind for a while, but I find no straight answers. One could contend that these questions apply to most traditions, yet they felt weightier on this morning, and an oppressive haze was clouding my mind.

We lost track of how long we had waited, amidst the deathly smell of cigarette smoke, the whistles and the screams. Eventually, from chiselled stone the choir sang the words of Hymnus Eucharisticus . Everyone says it’s underwhelming, possibly the most underwhelming tradition in Oxford. It’s soft; to be honest, one can’t hear anything; it really, really isn’t that great; why did we come to this; etc. etc. But I was entranced, impressed by the expectant, almost censorious silence that was imposed as the moment arrived, a silence that judged the rowdy drunks harshly. I do not know what we were expecting, but I knew we were expecting something. The silence held through the main hymn and the oration after, before the crowds decided to hunt for food and drink. Lib Dems and Christians were handing out flyers: possibly the only passionate and sincere people in the crowd.

I found myself moved, immeasurably moved. The choir wished (faintly), in the last two lines of the Hymnus, that “Immensum hoc mysterium/Ovante lingua canimus”. (“This mystery of Love be sung/In every age by every tongue”, according to one translation.) The oration paralleled Christ and the ascendant Spring, both bringing life - once more - to a sinful, barren earth. Yet all of this was proclaimed to a crowd of drunk unbelievers, who listened to it with a barely civil tolerance. Or perhaps it was a stunned incomprehension and a sense of risibility? Did I perhaps imagine that this mob had sieged the tower as it weakly and unsurely proclaimed the truths of a past age? It is only proper that I confess now that I am a religionist of some sort, a confused Christian at best. It was at best a mixed, confused message: the Christian traditions of May Morning were a fairly typical admixture of the pagan and the vaguely Christian. (The celebration of Spring in Christianity is always somewhat suspect.) But I was convinced of something, something akin to noble martyrdom, as an ineffable sense of - and I struggle for words here - pity and piety overtook me. (It was sentimental and silly of me, but I did close my eyes and offer a prayer.) I am equally convinced I was the only one who felt this way, as none of my friends seemed to understand what I meant to say exactly.

William Holman Hunt’s painting of this event, May Morning on Magdalen Tower (1888-90), is itself suitably agnostic about Christian truth, with Hunt stating that he meant to capture “the spirit of a beautiful, primitive and in a large sense eternal service”, including in the painting a sun-worshipper to make a point about the spiritual unity of all religions. But his painting does not feature the crowd; Hunt knew, even at this point, that the crowd was not sympathetic. When tradition is no longer wedded with belief, what are we to make of it? (A big question for this university, with the motto of 'Dominus Illumantio Mea') I have tried to fashion my feelings into verse, but the words have failed on my tongue and the pen does not match my hopes, and these feeble thoughts are all I offer.

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