Past Talks
Pagans & Puritans – The Story of May Morning in Oxfordshire
Date: 21st May 2018
Speaker: Tim Healey
Most people who live near Oxford
will have heard of the revels that occur
on May morning, especially around
Magdalen College tower. Very few of us
know the story of why this extraordinary
ceremony occurs and the history behind
it. In May we were delighted to welcome
back Tim Healey to educate us on the
subject.
As usual, his talk was entertaining,
amusing, educational and so full of
facts that anybody given the task of
summarising his talk has either got
to be good at shorthand or have an
exceptional memory! I don’t have either,
but I do have access to the internet where
you will find that Tim has created several
webpages dedicated to May Morning in
Oxford, some of which is summarised
here. But I suggest you look at his site as
it contains far more information than I
can give you!
Listening to the choir singing a hymn
in Latin at 6am from the top of Magdalen
College tower is just one of many
Maytime revels and traditions that occur
in the city, some of which go back to the
13th Century. They were controversial
then and in 1250 the Chancellor of Oxford
forbade ‘alike in churches, all dancing
in masks or with disorderly noises, and
all processions of men wearing wreaths
and garlands made of leaves of trees or
flowers or what not.’
maid-marions, morris dancers, maskers,
mummers, may-pole stealers, health
drinkers, gamesters, lewd men and light
women’. A bit like Oxford now I suppose – nothing changes!
By the 16th century May games and
morris dancing are closely associated. In
Oxford in 1599, we are told:
‘The inhabitants assembled on the
two Sundays before Ascension Day,
and on that day, with drum and shot
and other weapons, and men attired in
women’s apparel, brought into the town
a woman bedecked with garlands and
flowers named by them the Queen of the
May. They also had morris dancers and
other disordered and unseemly sports,
and intended the Sunday to continue
the same abuses.’
The report also alludes to ‘men attired
in women’s apparel’. Cross-dressing was
a ribald feature of morris celebrations,
which
particularly
Contents
Meg Latham . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Bygone Bicester . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Walks and Outings . . . . . . . . 5
Roll of Honour . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Marj’s Memories . . . . . . . . . . 6
Village History . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Talks Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
A Dark Night in 1940 . . . . . . . 8
Dates For Your Diary
Coming of the Railways Talk
18th June - 7:30pm
July Newsletter Submissions
Deadline
scandalised
see page 8
29th June
Folly Bridge & Grandpont Walk
8th July
Wireless War Secrets Talk
16th July - 7:30pm
see page 8
Open Air Museum Visit
22nd July
The celebrations were not well
documented until the late 1600s. Initially
May Day was greeted with secular part
songs dedicated to Flora, the Roman
goddess of flowers (the margarine hadn’t
been invented then!). To 17th-century
Puritans, reviving the deity was deeply
worrying. They saw Flora as a living
reality, a profane heathen goddess come
to life in the May Queen. The country was
reverting to paganism!
Thomas Hall, in his ferocious rant
Funebria florae, the downfall of May
games (1660), rails against Flora as a
whore ‘of the city of Rome, in the county
of Babylon’. Her worship brought in a
pack of ‘ignorants, atheists, papists,
drunkards, swearers, swash-bucklers,
opponents. The Puritan Christopher
Fetherston fulminated against the
practice in his Dialogue Against Light,
Lewd and Lascivious Dancing (1582). ‘For
the abuses which are committed in your
May games are infinite. The first whereof
is this, that you do use to attire men in
women’s apparel, whom you do most
commonly call May Marrions, whereby
you infringe that straight commandment
which is given in Deuteronomy 22.5.
That men must not put on women’s
apparel for fear of enormities.’!
Tim went on to describe how the
Maypole became an idolic feature of the
celebrations, and would be covered in
flowers and herbs, bound with strings
and ribbons from the top to the bottom,
and sometimes painted with variable
colours with two or three hundred men,
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women and children following it with great devotion.
So began a cheery complicity - deep-rooted in many towns
and villages - between the parish church and the disorderly
revellers. Some parishes even kept their own sets of morris
costumes in church to be brought out for their annual Whitsun
Ale celebrations.
But as mentioned before, the Puritans were horrified by all
May customs and their attack on the celebrations in Oxfordshire
was led from Banbury, famous as a hotbed of Puritan zealotry.
Vicar Thomas Bracebridge fronted the effort to destroy the
Banbury Maypoles and all other heathen practices. In May
1589 the constable of Banbury issued an edict to ‘take down
all Maypoles within his district and to repress and put down
all Whitsun ales, May games and morris dances and utterly to
forbid any wakes or fairs to be kept.’
Under Cromwell’s Protectorate the Puritans had their way
and the May revels were shut down everywhere.
The May games returned with the Restoration of 1660
to widespread rejoicing. Anthony Wood reports, ‘This Holy
Thursday (31st May) the people of Oxon were so violent
for Maypoles in opposition to the Puritans that there was
numbered 12 Maypoles besides 3 or 4 morrises.’
However, although the Puritans were out of power, resistance
to the May-Day activities still continued. But gradually during
the 18th century the character of the May revels seems to have
changed. We hear less of maypoles in Oxford and more of boys
blowing horns. It is reported that boys in Oxford used to blow
cows’ horns or hollow canes early on May morning. In 1724,
Thomas Hearne writes that the horns were used in Maytime
as drinking vessels as well as for making music: ‘The custom
of blowing them prevails, at that season, even to this day, at
Oxford, to remind people of the pleasantness of that part of
the Year, which ought to create Mirth and Gayety.’
The Morris seem to have been active on May Morning
in Oxford during the 19th century. It may be that the morris
who appeared on the streets of Victorian Oxford came in from
Headington and other surrounding villages. What is certain is
that May Morning in Oxford changed in the latter half of the
Victorian age as Magdalen Tower came increasingly into the
picture - and Headington spurred a nationwide morris revival.
The long battle between Pagans and Puritans was over.
Dancing around Maypoles, morris displays and the election
of May Queens - human replicas of the once-abhorred Flora -
were all subsumed into the Victorian myth of Merrie England.
Three eminent Victorians helped legitimise May Day: Alfred
Tennyson with his long poem The May Queen; Holman Hunt
with his iconic painting May Morning on Magdalen Tower; and
John Ruskin who ritualised May celebrations at Whitelands
College in Chelsea, a training college for women teachers who
carried customs into the school curriculum.
An excellent talk by Tim – and for more information follow
this link: http://www.maymorning.co.uk/426023492- Bob Hessian