THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 21, 1996 TAG: 9601190306
SECTION: CHESAPEAKE CLIPPER PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Random Rambles
SOURCE: Tony Stein
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines
Talk about aging fast! At 10 o'clock next Saturday morning, Stella Brindle will suddenly become 766 years old. Not to worry, though. It's only for the day.
And it's happening because Brindle is a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. They pretend to be people from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. That means from about 1100 to 1600 and Brindle has created a character named Brandwyn Alston, born in England in 1230.
You can meet ``Brandwyn'' and other society members at the Chesapeake Central Library next Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. They'll time-warp you back hundreds of years for a living history lesson in the costumes, customs and fun of antiquity. ``Gentles'' - that's what society members call any person - are welcome, thank you. Children, by the way, are ``halfings'' or ``smalls.'' And a telephone is a ``farspeaker.''
There will be dancing during the program and armored fighting at 2 p.m. Meanwhile, there will be demonstrations of medieval arts and sciences. How to make chain mail armor, for instance. Knit one, purl two, clank, clink, clunk.
What you'll see is a sampling of life among the people of royal court and castle. No peasants, no serfs. It's not that the society is snooty. It's that (A) the deadening drudge of peasantry would make pretty poor fantasy. And (B) court and castle folks were the ones who could read and write and thus keep records of their doings that could survive the years.
Brindle, who lives in Virginia Beach, says her character of Brandwyn lives about 50 miles north of London. She and her family are tenants in a castle they used to own, but it was taken away from them when the Normans conquered England in 1066. That was the year they whomped Harold and the Saxons (no, not a rock band) at the battle of Hastings. So now the Alstons live in the castle with about 60 other people; nobles and men-at-arms and servants and what we would call middle-class folk.
But Brandwyn has a problem. She's a fiery wench, not always respectful to the upper crust and not inclined to accept the fact that women were low on the medieval totem pole. Like if the lord of the manor takes a fancy to her, she's got no say in the matter. There was, in fact, a custom that the lord of the manor was entitled to any bride on her wedding night.
Brandwyn is so sassy that her father is nervous and he has sent her off to live with her brother outside the castle. Even there, she won't behave like a proper young woman. She has snooped over her brother's lessons and actually learned to read and write. This despite the conventional wisdom that women weren't smart enough to learn.
Since ``Brandwyn'' can write, this allows Brindle to enjoy doing manuscript work, creating documents in beautiful reproductions of medieval-style penmanship. She turns out awards and citations for members that even Richard the Lion-Hearted would be proud to hang on his wall.
One thing you can be thankful for is that the society does not try to reproduce the sanitary conditions of the Middle Ages. Baths were considered bad, an open door to disease. Life was tough and often very short. Half of the babies died before they were a year old, Brindle says. And 50 was a ripe old age.
Ask Brindle why she nestles happily in the Middle Ages and she calls it an enjoyable fantasy. However, she's glad to leave it a fantasy. ``If my character of Brandwyn was so free-willed in the actual Middle Ages,'' Brindle says, ``she would probably be burned at the stake.''
Leader of the local society - they call him ``seneschal'' - is Jim Gilly of Norfolk. His character is a Lowland Scot of the year 1300. He chose that character because his family traces its lineage to the eminent Wallaces of ancient Scotland. While both Gilly and Brindle talk about the enjoyment of their fantasy world, they want us to know that they have also learned a ton of factual stuff about the Middle Ages.
``Libraries are wonderful places,'' Gilly says, waving library cards for Norfolk, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach as he says it.
I asked Brindle and Gilly what kind of a Middle Ages character a newspaper guy could be and they said maybe a bard. That was someone who made up songs. OK, here's the ``Ballad of Chesapeake:''
Hey, nonny, nonny, for goodness sake,
City hall looks like a wedding cake.
From old South Norfolk to the Carolina border
I love the town, but I don't drink the water.
On second thought, forget it. If the lord of the manor has any kind of good taste, this bard is in big trouble. by CNB