May-day, although a day of general holiday and rejoicing, is nevertheless considered, as is the whole of the month, unlucky for marriage, and few are celebrated on this day; more weddings being hastened, so as to be over before this day, than postponed until June. This does not apply to divinations for future partners, for in some parts of the county it is usual to prepare a sweet mixture on the first of May, composed of new milk, cakes, wine, and spice, and for the assembled company to fish with a ladle for a ring and a sixpence, which have been dropped into the bowl; the young man who gains the ring and the young woman the sixpence being supposed to be intended for each other.--_Jour. of Arch. Assoc._ 1853, vol. viii. p. 234. OXFORDSHIRE. Previous to the Reformation a requiem mass is said to have been performed every May-morning at an early hour on the top of Magdalen tower, Oxford, for the repose of the soul of Henry VII., who had honoured that college with a visit in 1486-7. The choristers continue to execute in the same place, at five o’clock in the morning of the same day, certain pieces of choir-music, for which service the rectory of Slimbridge in Gloucestershire pays the yearly sum of £10. The ceremony has encouraged the notion that Henry contributed to the erection of the tower, but his only recorded act of favour to the college is the confirmation of its claim to the rectory charged with the annual payment. The following hymn is sung on the occasion of this ceremony: “Te Deum Patrem colimus, Te laudibus prosequimur, Qui corpus cibo reficis Cœlesti mentem gratia. Te adoramus, O Jesu! Te, Fili unigenite! Te, qui non dedignatus es Subire claustra Virginis. Actus in crucem factus es, Irato Deo victima; Per te, Salvator unice, Vitæ spes nobis rediit. Tibi, æterne Spiritus, Cujus afflatu peperit Infantem Deum Maria, Æternum benedicimus! Triune Deus, hominum Salutis Auctor optime, Immensum hoc mysterium Ovanti lingua canimus.” A correspondent of _N. & Q._ (_2nd S._ vii. p. 446) thinks this hymn was composed by Dr. Thomas Smith, a very learned fellow of Magdalen College, soon after the Restoration, and that it was not sung till about the middle of the last century.[57]--Akerman, _History of Oxford_, vol. i. p. 251; Wade, _Walks in Oxford_, 1817, vol. i. p. 132.