May Day Celebrations
The Choir, as is tradition, sang the Hymnus Eucharisticus from the Great Tower at 6.00 am on May Morning. The weather was kind to Oxford on Saturday and the celebrations were attended by a record crowd of 16,000. The hymn, composed in the 17th century by a Magdalen Fellow, is reproduced here in this painting, May Morning on Magdalen Tower (1891), by the Victorian artist William Holman Hunt.