laurel - part I

[ursula]

I told gwacie:

We could play the reasie game. What do you want to hear about first? Ceremony? Food? Clothes? People? Wise advice?

She replied:

Start with the vigil :) Did you do a formal vigil? With a tent and things?

The question itself makes for an interesting bit of inter-kingdom anthropology: if I hadn't talked to sue_n_julia, I might not know what you mean about the tent. Vigils in An Tir are pretty free-form: usually there's a spread of food and the opportunity to talk to the person on vigil, sometimes in private, sometimes in a big group, but there's no real standard, and no requirement to keep non-peers from hearing the secret knowledge. "Formal" to me means "research vigils for knighthood and do the rituals involving a formal bath and clothing of a certain color". Since I was basing my ceremony on the Golden Fleece ceremony, and members of knightly orders were already knights, I didn't feel the need for the ritual bath. Instead, I made lots and lots of food.




The final course of a banquet, as described in Le Menagier de Paris and his ilk, makes a good model for a buffet. I bought a krumkake iron on e-bay and made wafers every night for a week (rosewater, ginger, port, and cheese flavors).



aelfgyfu brought claré, a spiced white wine. I also made a medieval apple and pear pie (with belmanoir's help) and a subtlety involving pear glop surrounded by pie-crust bears passant.



ayeshadream made candied fruits and ginger, and apples with figs. tejolote bought vast quantities of amazing cheese, and belmanoir and the household brought fruit and nuts.

We held the "vigil" in the afternoon before court. At the beginning it was fairly quiet: aelfgyfu and I worked on hemming my cloak, a few people stopped by & praised the pie. Earl Sir Edward showed up and gave me an old-school interrogation about the meaning of fealty. Eventually I sent aelfgyfu out to recruit more Laurels, and they arrived en masse. I collected some more advice (don't make faces walking out of meetings, people expect you to be expert in every medieval art, etc.), and Dame Ellen and the very nice person in the apron dress who might have been jillwheezul took over the cloak, though Dame Ellen made me swear that I would never attribute the hemming to her. gwen_the_potter gave me a cup with Laurel leaves around it and made me promise not to use it till after the ceremony.

At this point time sped up again: countess_e dressed me, Elfa helped me sew up my hair again, and it was time for court.



(Thanks to tejolote for photos!)

Comments

[gwacie.livejournal.com]

It's funny, I know you've always been an An Tir person, but somehow I expect that your one summer in the Cleftlands meant that you absorbed all of our Kingdom's customs by osmosis ;) heh. Wafers look great, heck, that whole spread looks great! Yay pictures! this is just what I wanted :)

For the rest of you An Tir-ians, in the Middle a peerage vigil usually involves the vigilant in a white dress or tunic in a tent, with the food outside. Anyone can show up and stand (or sit) in line to give the vigilant advice. I love going to vigils, it's like a captive audience for philosophizing about peerage and virtue and stuff! And there's also usually a guest book for folks to sign and write little words of wisdom for the new peer to read later once their head has stopped spinning. It's not the only way we do vigils, just the most common.

I so wish I could've been there to help! Everything looks so great! *squee!*

[ursula]

*Hug*

Someday I'm gonna come to Pennsic and actually cook.

[glasseye.livejournal.com]

Well, I specifically remember us talking about vigils in the midrealm vs an tir. Several times, even (but maybe that's why I'm tagged in this entry... ;) )

Now that you're an expert on every medieval art I should start pestering you about metalwork. ;)

And yes, the food was awesome.

[ursula]

You're tagged because I wrote about you breaking aelfgyfu's cup and then couldn't remember whether that happened during the vigil proper and deleted it :P

[ornerie.livejournal.com]

I wanna see photos of the dress!!! :D

[glasseye.livejournal.com]

There's one of us walking into court together here (http://www.doomchicken.net/~ursula/sca/laurelelevation/).

[reasie.livejournal.com]

Yay! The Reasie game!

heh.

Aw this looks lovely. The lighting was very nice for your pictures, and the wafers look so pretty!

Awww the bears!

*wibble* So sad I missed it.

[gwacie.livejournal.com]

Stupid lack of vacation time and high plane fares. Hmf. Unreasonable husband saying can't go to An Tir -and- Pennsic -and- KWHSS. Meanie. Stupid Great Plains taking up all that space!

[ursula]

Clearly you should come out next year!

[ursula]

You know you wanna visit before we move north ;)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad to hear it went well, and everything looks wonderful! Many congratulations. ♥

[ursula]

Thank you!

We will really, truly get together once I get back from Berkeley :)

[belmanoir.livejournal.com]

oh man, the food was SO AWESOME. ::wants it all again::

[ursula]

Yay!

By the way, I think we have your butter knife?

[belmanoir.livejournal.com]

it's possible. i wouldn't worry about it.

[ursula]

It's certainly classier than the Sharples collection.