Helen Nelson was a student at the rural Southern State Normal School in Springfield, Bon Homme County, South Dakota, or perhaps a recent graduate, when she pasted this series of photographs in her scrapbook.¹ A group of young girls dance ’round a Maypole twined with ribbons, certainly in celebration of the first of May. They were likely students at a local one-room schoolhouse, perhaps from a teaching assignment near Helen’s home in Yankton County, South Dakota, or from the “practice school” near Springfield.²

Raising a Maypole for a May Day celebration seems just the type of thing that an enthusiastic young teacher would have arranged to brighten a typical school day. Andrea Nelson, Helen’s elder sister, wrote in her diary of spontaneous recess games such as “Pump Pump Pull Away,” as well as moving class outdoors in good weather.³ This Maypole must have been a planned affair; the ten or so girls, ranging in age from perhaps six to twelve, seem to be dressed in their best summer dresses, with most in white or pastels. Several wear bows in their hair as well as sashes at their waists. In the final photograph, they bow to each other as their dance concludes.

Although this celebration took place near 1920, Maypoles were certainly nothing new. The American Girls Handy Book, originally published in 1887, mentions the ancient origins of the day and gives the following instructions for a Maypole dance:

“An even number of persons are required for this dance; half the number take the end of a ribbon in the right hand and half in the left; they then stand facing alternately right and left. When the dance commences, each dancer facing the right passes under the ribbon held by the one opposite facing the left; she then allows the next person going to the left to pass under her ribbon, and so, tripping in and out, under and over, the ribbons are woven around the pole.”⁴

The dance goes on, including variations to weave the ribbons together, and all the while, according to the Handybook, “An appropriate song, with words set to a dancing air, should be sung by those taking part in the May-pole dance.”⁵

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SOURCES
¹ Helen (Nelson) Wiese Harbeck Scrapbook, ca. 1920; privately held by [personal information withheld], 2014.
² The Echo, Vol. 1 (Springfield, South Dakota: Southern State Normal School, 1916), 79; privately held by Melanie Frick, 2014.
³ Andrea Nelson, “Diary” (MS, Yankton County, South Dakota, 1918), unpaginated; privately held by Melanie Frick, 2014.
⁴ Lina Beard and Amelia B. Beard, The American Girls Handy Book: How to Amuse Yourself and Others (1887), reprint, with foreword by Anne M. Boylan (Jaffrey, New Hampshire: David R. Godine, Publisher, Inc., 2006), 79.
⁵ Beard and Beard, The American Girls Handy Book, 80.