Children dance with their parents around one of the two children’s maypoles by McMurran Hall on Sunday afternoon. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — Umbrellas swayed above the heads scattered around McMurran Hall’s lawn on Sunday afternoon, as community members gathered to participate in Shepherdstown’s annual May Day and Arbor Day celebration.

According to one of the event’s organizers, Shepherdstown Music & Dance founder Joanie Blanton, the first recording of May Day being celebrated in Shepherdstown was sometime in the 1800s at the current location of Morgan’s Grove Park. However, the modern observances of the holiday began in 1993, when Blanton and other like-minded individuals decided to create a May Day celebration with elements reminiscent of those in England. Some of those elements were discovered during a couple of trips taken by local morris dance teams, including the fertility ritual of touching a person dressed up in a black, barrel-shaped horse costume.

“We learned a lot by going to England,” said Becky Lidgerding, who was on one of the morris dance teams to tour in England in the 1990s. In recent years, she has stepped back from morris dancing at the May Day celebration, in favor of playing her flute with a band of other local folk instrumentalists, as she did Sunday afternoon.

Three bagpipers started off the celebration, leading attendees to the side of McMurran Hall, where the maypole had been placed. Their performance continued throughout the event, joining with the band as accompaniment to a variety of dances, including the Ladies in White Garland Dance by young female dancers in white dresses, the “Cuckoo’s Nest” by Hicks with Sticks Border Morris, the “Padstow May Day Song,” “Sellenger’s Round” and the weaving of the maypole. The dances were interspersed with pagan fertility symbolism: the dancing of the Jack-in-the-Green, an English symbol of spring’s fertility, with the Ladies in White; the passage of the Black Horse through the crowd of onlookers; and the communal sharing of lemon poppyseed bundt cakes impaled on wooden sword carriers.

“May Day is a spring ritual. You’re doing all of these things to make your crops grow, to make spring come and all that kind of stuff. There’s a lot of imagery, of course, of male imagery going into very female imagery,” Blanton said, as she motioned to the maypole for illustration.

Hicks with Sticks Border Morris group dances around the maypole on McMurran Hall’s lawn Sunday afternoon. Tabitha Johnston

After the May Day events finished, the microphone was handed over to Mayor Jim Auxer, who spoke briefly before reading a poem about his hopes for the coming months.

“This is a really long-time tradition in Shepherdstown. Thank you, everyone, for keeping this going!” Auxer said. “Not only are we celebrating May Day, but we’re celebrating Arbor Day. With the forestry service coming here today, this was the 16th year in a row that Shepherdstown has been named a Tree City USA. Just look at our tree canopy today!”

According to Public Works Department Director Frank Welch, the West Virginia Division of Forestry once again gave the town a tree, for planting in commemoration of the renewal of its designation as a Tree City USA. The tree, a red maple, was set to be planted by the town at the James Rumsey Monument and Park soon after the celebration ended.

“This is our 16th year as a Tree City USA, and we’re already working on year 17,” Welch said, regarding the town’s continuing tree-friendly practices. “Tying that in with this is great. There are so many people who know about this, because of it being joined with the May Day celebration!”

The Ladies in White Garland Dance is performed with the Green Man, to the tune of three bagpipers, at Shepherdstown's May Day celebration by McMurran Hall on Sunday afternoon. Tabitha Johnston

May Day celebrants take a bite of lemon poppyseed bundt cake from off of its wooden sword carrier, as part of a traditional fertility ritual, on McMurran Hall’s lawn Sunday afternoon. Tabitha Johnston

May Day celebrants touch the Black Horse, as it passes among them on McMurran Hall's lawn Sunday afternoon. The pagan English tradition of the Black Horse claims to bring fertility to those who touch it on May Day. Tabitha Johnston