May Day Mysteries!

Sometimes you might ask a question to the world—a rhetorical question as they are often called—and then, mysteriously, an answer materializes. I am pleased to be able to report that Old Ken has recently enjoyed this experience at the May Day festivities in Oxford.



Now, as part of my enrollment in LearningQuest 2005, Old Ken has recently been reading about the English "festival calendar" and its fate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. According to what I have read, celebration of May Day can first be traced by documentary record to the late medieval period. Then, celebrants would repair to the woods before dawn, returning with greenery and flowers with which to deck out the village. Although the May pole dancing that we now associate with the day seems not then to have been in use, other (perhaps less directly phallic) tributes to this fertility rite were widespread including theatrical performances of Robin Hood stories and displays of morris dancing.



As you will clearly see from the accompanying photographs, some salient connection with these ancient practices certainly still seems to be evident in 2005 Oxford. The pale, pink light reflecting off the eastern face of the Magdalen College tower (in the first picture) indeed testifies to the fact that Old Ken was there, along with thousands of other revellers before dawn, eager to propitiate the fertility gods.



While much is made of the exploits of the few souls who annually leap from Magdalen College bridge into the shallow, goose-feces-infested waters of the River Cherwell some twenty feet below, Old Ken was struck by the atavistic character of the celebrations—the primordial atmosphere signalled by ritual implements like the "skull and horns" of the Oxford ox decked out in garlands of flowers and the uncanny, animated shrub known as "Jack o'the Green" or simply "the green man" (the latter may be seen above).



Nor was morris dancing in any short supply. As Old Ken was lucky enough to observe, Radcliffe Square (which surrounds the impressive circular Radcliffe Camera, whose rusticated porticoes feature prominently in the next few images) was overtaken by morris troupes. Now, I had always worked on the assumption that morris dancers were a rather dour, humorless lot. Not so with these! With great whoops and agility, they would dance about, whacking each other with sticks to the tune of an accordion, whistle and the tinkling of the bells adorning their costumes.



Yet, attending to the festive costumes, my eye was caught by the dress of the morris dancer at the center of the picture above, with his back turned to us. Clearly, he has a clue very important to our ongoing inquiries into squirrels and their clandestine activities dangling down from the back of his cap. Alongside a collection of pheasant feathers sufficiently majestic as to impress the likes of Hyacinthe Bucket or, more recently, Camilla Parker-Bowles, this dancer clearly has a squirrel tail integrated into his chapeau. Ever committed to skeptical comportment to the evidence of the senses and experimental methods in general, Old Ken can reassure you that I not only saw but actually fondled this tail as the dancer went past. In any case, what this clearly tells us is that he is secret squirrel. Case closed!



Basking in the glow of this revelation, I felt not unlike the eastern face of the Bodleian Library warming in the rising sun of May morning.



And there, interestingly enough, I saw a famous anthropologist chatting with a man, eating a piece of cake out of a sword. Will these mysteries never cease?