May Day: hundreds of St Andrews students take dawn dip in Forth to mark May Day

At sunrise, they made their way down to East Sands and collectively run into the North Sea.

The Dip is a unique St Andrews tradition which is intended to bring good luck to students in their exams and cleanse any academic sins. The May Dip is also the only cure for the legendary curse of Patrick Hamilton - born into a Scottish aristocratic family, and branded a heretic and burned at the stake inn 1528.

His initials are outside the entrance of St Salvator’s College, and it is not uncommon to witness students and residents to deliberately walk around the letters. According to tradition, if a student steps on the ‘PH’, they will fall victim to the curse and be at risk of failing their exams or degree.

The night before the May Dip, students gathered to take part in The Gaudie, a torchlit procession and pier walk in St Andrews. It commemorates John Honey, a student, who in 1800 rescued members of the crew of the Janet of Macduff which had run aground off the East Sands. Every year, students process by candlelight, led by a piper, to the East Sands where they lay a wreath at the site of the shipwreck.