Catsidhe

It turned out that the Cockatrice drawing I knocked off in a couple of hours appeared on the front cover of the Cockatrice publication. People have said that they like it, which is gratifying.


After a week of not quite panicking, things more or less worked for 12th night, heraldically speaking.

I ran Henri and Beatrice's last court, handing off to actreal for Teffania's Laurel ceremony, and only almost ruining it in the introduction.

The final court also included, amongst lots and lots of Cyphers, a Cockatrice, Prometheus, a couple of Silver Pegasi and a White Scarf, felinophile being admitted as a Pelican.

The final court segued straight into the investiture ceremony, which I also did the shouting for.

After lunch, the first court of Felix and Eva, handled by actreal. This was all about the Royal Household, and no awards (requiring entry into Canon Lore) were given.

After tourneys and other such entertainments, first court of the evening was run by Sorle, who passed off to the B&B Stormhold who allowed me to pass my Office of Goutte d'Eau off to pearl, who very shortly thereafter was also admitted as a Laurel.

Paul Mortar was granted a Golden Tear, there was another Cockatrice, a Star and Lily, and Dante the newly appointed Deputy Goutte d'Eau was granted an Award of Arms.

And actreal was made a Court Baron.

The chest I made at Mistress Antonia's workshop did not win the Arts and Sciences competition, but it was very handy to carry our feasting gear -- and it fits almost perfectly into the boot of Mim's car.

People said nice things about my shouting, including that they were entertained when I pronounced people's names as they were meant to be, not as they might be read out naively.


Sunday was at a site a long way away. actreal was not there, so I did the courts, and Sorle did his shouting duty at the tourney. One of the items of business was that the previous evening the children had chosen a king and queen by the finding of a bean in a cake. Miss A was the queen of the children. They came up in court to ask permission to hold a children's court, which was graciously granted (their Majesties seemed taken by the idea), and their majesties ran the King and Queen of the Children through a quick oath to Do The Right Thing, and granted them tokens. (Which was not expected or planned, but was a lovely touch.) Miss A in particular had a strong clear voice in court and her petition and answers were note-perfect.

During the day there was wandering, and talking, and Being Hit On The Head Lessons, and the Children's Court (they appointed their own lords and ladies of the court, and a herald, and gave out awards and prizes, and waved banners, and generally demonstrated that the College of Heralds and the various aspects of nobility will be in good hands when it comes their time.

I heralded the final court, which had a Golden Tear (for the Steward), a Star and Lily, several gifts and offers of fealty, and one huge glaring stuff-up on my part when the court was closed, we had had cheers for the King and Queen, and I then declared three cheers for "the Barons and Baronesses, the Peers, and the populace of Stormhold".

I didn't even realise I'd said that (at the top of my lungs) until the Kraé Glassians all looked at me horrified, gave confused cheers (knowing what I meant), and then informed me what I'd said.

Autopilot can be a bitch.

And there's documentary evidence of the coronation.

And Sorle Canon was right there, so all the CHAF forms went straight to him then and there, and it's already up on Canon Lore.

The SCA in Stormhold was on TV.

There's some bearded fool being interviewed at 20:49.

Miss S features at a couple of points. It's almost like she's photogenic or something.

OK, I'm happier with today.

In today's favour:

• Courts were shorter, and I had some idea what was going to happen beforehand
  
• There were fewer people there, so it felt friendlier
  
• There was a volunteer who took over duty for field heraldry, so I wasn't yelling from go to whoa.

So: no meltdown today. Huzzah!

Maybe familiarity will acclimatise me so that I can bear more stress without breaking. That would be nice.

Yesterday was the Mediaeval Faire at the State Library, to ring up interest in the exhibition of Manuscripts which is on at the moment (and I still haven't seen...). I was there as an exhibit, as part of the SCA's cohort. I brought along some of my calligraphy gear, expecting to be a little contextually appropriate colour.

I found myself, instead, talking to a three-deep crowd for six hours straight.

I now have a sore throat, for some reason.

I should point out that the girls were there in garb, Abi in a brand new dress made specially, and they were photographed like it was going out of fashion. They were both very chuffed at how pretty they were looking, and did really well until they started to crash and burn.


Another lady was there who does Illumination properly, with glair and powder pigments and sheet gold and everything. I was the scribe, writing things down and demonstrating different hands, the minim problem, that sort of thing. As I knew that I'd need something to copy, I brought along Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Primer. Thus, I got to answer questions about English, and its development, and why do we spell things like we do, and ‘I'm learning Latin, and this is latin, why can't I read it?’, and such things.

The ‘Why can't I read this Latin’ was easy: I just explained the development of Latin into Ecclesiastic Latin from the Classical they were learning (almost universally out of the Cambridge Latin Series), and when they complained that Church Latin pronounced things funny, I pointed out that Cicero might have called himself \Kikero\ in the Senate, but his mates would have called him \Chichero\ down the taberna.

Anyway: I gave the History of English several times, and I've got it down fairly pat by now. ( So, here it is )

I also talked about how there was no such thing as The Renaissance. There were several, in various places, at various times, such as Alfred's English renaissance, the Carolingian renaissance (with the assistance of the English bishop Alcuin), the Arabic renaissance, which led to the preservation of some of the great works of antiquity, translated from Greek to Arabic, then from Arabic to Latin and re-learned by Europe.

The other lady and I talked about pigments, and how the Earth colours were basically dirt, usually from Italy (Sienna is dirt from Sienna, Umber is dirt from Umbria), how Ultramarine was the most expensive pigment you could get, more expensive even than gold, and why, and how the brightest colours, Orpiment and Cinnabar, could kill you if they weren't prepared carefully enough, and ruin the painting if you didn't know how to apply them. And how you could write with carbon ink, made from lampblack, or bone black, or just finely crushed charcoal, or you could use Oak Gall ink, where the tannic acid starts pale watery yellow, then oxidises in front of your eyes into a rich black, but unfortunately could leave sulphuric acid behind which attacked the parchment.

Oh, and how transcription errors could screw your history books. For a long time the introduction to the Anglo Saxon Chronicles was taken as gospel, where it said that the Irish had moved there from Armenia. It made no sense, but the source book had it thus, and thus it must have been. Until someone thought to see where the authors of the ASC had got it from, and found that section almost verbatim in Bede's History of the English People. Only he says that the Irish came from Armorica, in what is now Spain. (And that actually does make sense, that the Irish were originally Iberian Celts, who migrated around to the west of the British Isles). It does mention Armenia, though, a couple of lines down. What we think happened is, the scribe who was composing the ASC was reading from his copy of Bede, looked away to write, and lost his place when he looked back. He probably didn't even notice. And thus the history books were wrong for a thousand years.

And also there was discussion on various other topics, but these above were the lion's share of those six hours. And my throat hurts, and my back aches.

But still, not bad for no warning or preparation, purely off the top of my head, eh?