[Disclaimer: this post was written on an adrenaline high and may contain undignified celebratory remarks]
Today was a great SCA event. The weather was perfect--clear but just a bit crisp rather than hot. Ron was fighting. He fought well and made third round and later won me a rose.
Aasa had talked me into bringing an entry for the original poetry category. I decided to finally bring out the poem I wrote in Middle Scots a number of years ago. I'd kept threatening to use it in Bardic competitions, joking that I really didn't want the job anyway and a poem in a foreign language was sure to make eyes glaze over. But this was different--exactly the audience for a piece in a period style and a period language: A&S judges and Vitoria as Princess (let's just say she was quoting and/or speaking Greek and Latin and Italian just today just while I was listening and is doing graduate level work in medieval music). So I decided to enter. I forgot to write up my documentation earlier so I was up till 1:30am writing it up--just a couple paragraphs. Only two references. I must have looked at a half dozen things all those years ago, plus being steeped in all my readings for class. But I gave them the two main sources at least.
I'm probably a better performer now than I would have back then. In fact, I'm not sure that 20-year-old me would have entered a competition where I would have had to read my poem aloud to the princess and judges. Today I was able to read it with bombast. Luckily I do in fact remember enough Scots to know what I was saying and which bits to be loud and harsh with and which to give a lighter touch. ;) Anyway, I don't feel guilty for entering such an old piece since I've never entered it in anything before.
I had to badger Aasa in return. After all that, she'd shown up without a poem of her own. She ended up writing a rondeau with the refrain "Derile twisted my arm"!
I also decided impulsively to enter the metal working competition. I hadn't had time to write up any documentation at all for my trichinopoly (a looped wire technique) but I had a number of my pieces with me. I took a look at what I had and I had five of my early attempts in the original technique I learned where you tuck behind the preceding row, and one of my best attempts so far at replicating the specific piece of Pictish provenience (might be of Pictish or Viking origin but it was found in a Pictish silver hoard). It doesn't have the crazy level of detail--exact number of loops as the original etc--that I intend to aim for at some point, but it was a good solid example of the technique of going behind two rows instead of just one which makes a much tighter "weave" to the piece, making it look a lot more tight and complex.
I hand wrote documentation for two entries: one for the Pictish find technique one, and one for the single row technique set.
Well, I guess maybe you can tell where this is headed. The announced that the same person had won both competitions. My first thought was a hopeful: there can't be that many people who entered both. My second was: there's no way I could have won both. My third was again: there really can't have been that many people who entered both. And then they called my name (a bit mangled, but never mind that. I knew I was asking for it when I chose a Pictish name!). I was totally floored and excited.
Not content to let the princess give me both awards, the prince insisted he give me the metal working award since he'd judged that one. :)
I still can't get over all those people liking my stuff. And with handwritten documentation no less! (Ok, so I was able to recall a fair bit of the scholarly issues involved, and the divide between the two detailed accounts of the piece, and so and so forth. But without exact references I thought I was doomed.)
The arts award token is cast metal and pretty, with a harp. But I adore the sciences token which is a mini but working pair of calipers! I keep measuring things with my calipers and giggling like a little kid.
I figured after my Twelfth Night entry where I didn't even make the half the possible points mark necessary to go on in the competition that I had a long way to go with A&S before I'd win anything. But I suppose that was in illumination which I'd never tried and isn't even related to anything I do (painting miniatures in the war gaming sense and a long ago interest in drawing Celtic knotwork would be the closest pursuits) whereas trichinopoly and poetry are both sometime obsessions of mine.
Wee!
*giggle*
Anyway, while I've let go of the idea of going for the Golden Poppy contest this year, I may well go for the Silver Muse (which I'd never heard of before but is similar to the Poppy but on the Principality level and needs only 5 qualifying entries instead of 8. 2 down, 3 to go. I'd better look up what the other ones are!)
I had colorwork knitting in my hands when they called me up.
Isn't that just the way of it? When I got my AoA, they had to pluck me, soaking wet, from the kitchens where I was washing feast dishes. When I get called up for an A&S award I have more A&S projects in hand.
2 comments:
Oh, how delightful! Yay you! And, yes, that is exactly the correct Princess to share poems in another language with. Can you share photos of the metal work? And perhaps post the poem and documentation here (or give it to Hirsch for the bardic section of the History of the West pages, or both)?
Glasgow Wynter
A Middle Scots Poem
by Derile ingen Ferat
Quhen that the schouris once again did fall,
The blastis gurlit drivand cloudis cleir,
Syne the froist freisit and glaister coverit all
And pepill slade aboot with cautious maneir.
Than thus Januar began the Wynter cheir
And heillit far and neir in jolie cristall.
Thus joy displaces the dreich originall.
Translation:
When the showers once again did fall,
The gales howled driving clouds clear,
Then the frost froze and a thin covering of ice covered everything
And people slid about with a cautious manner.
In this way January began the winter cheer
And covered far and near in pretty crystal.
Thus joy displaces the gloomy original.
Language
The language is Older Scots, mostly Middle Scots (with a few touches of later, more modern versions of Scots where I didn't know or couldn't find the Middle Scots term―in such cases it may have been the correct term anyway, but it is hard to know for certain). Unlike Old English and Middle English, Middle Scots is generally used as a term denoting a latter period within the larger period covered by Older Scots. Middle Scots was spoken in Scotland, predominantly in the lowlands, from approximately 1450-1700. At the time of writing I was well steeped in a study of the history of the language and literature of Scots, having just taken several university courses on the subject at Glasgow University, but I consulted a number of dictionaries to aid me, most notably Concise Scots Dictionary (Scottish Dictionary Association. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999).
Form
The form is a single stanza of rhyme royal. Rhyme royal consists of seven lines, most typically of iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is ababbcc. It's invention is attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer (both by modern scholars and by the Makars―the medieval Scottish poets―themselves. It was extremely popular throughout the later medieval and Renaissance Scottish literary periods, thus suiting the language I chose to write in. Usually rhyme royal poetry would go on for multiple stanzas; whole epics (and comedies) were composed in this form, but writing a single stanza in a foreign language was sufficient challenge for me! (See in particular The Mercat Anthology of Early Scottish Literature, 1375-1707 edited by R.D.S. Jack and P.A.T. Rozendaal. Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1997.)
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