Raela a Bheithir - Award of Arms

There’s a buzz that’s been heard in Settmour Swamp

Of Someone due full circumstance and pomp

Raela a Bheithir, a cook and steward

Now an officer, and works herself hard 

Margarita,a queen most ingenious  

Trusts this award will not inconvenience 

For Raela, her Arms she is deserving
After all this work, We’ve been observing

Here Comes the Blog!  Do-do-do-doooo!
(With apologies to the Beatles)

Fiona approached me, looking for words for this scroll.  Her inspiration piece fit well enough into the Chaucerian time period that we decided to go with that.  

It had been a bit since I had tackled pure rhyming couplets and I was looking forward to it.

As a change of pace I decided not to start with Her Majesty's name, and instead started with a couplet referencing that the people of the barony had sent in the award recommendation.  

I ended up giving an individual couplet to each element of the scroll. It started to push the boundary of my word count.  I t ended up with exactly 100 words total.

The couplet I am most dissatisfied with is:

Raela a Bheithir, a cook and steward

Now an officer, and works herself hard

While it has the correct number of syllables and the words rhyme, I feel it is clunky.  But I can’t make everything perfect so I let it go.  Even with my dissatisfaction, I hope the recipient likes it.

Couplets I am fond of include:

Margarita, a queen most ingenious  

Trusts this award will not inconvenience 

I try to always include a positive adjective about the monarchs to convey their grandeur.  Not for nothing, I was pretty proud of the ingenious/inconvenience rhyme.

This scroll fell victim of COVID-19.  Mudthaw was the first event to be cancelled in 2020. Thankfully the calligraphy had yet to be completed and it was put on hold.  Three months later it  given out online at East's Ethereal Court VII hosted by Her Majesty Margarita. 
To accommodate the nature of an Ethereal Court, Fiona made the decision to simply cut out all of the time and place couplets in the scroll.

Went Out on 7/19/2020 a East's Ethereal Court VII  at the 26:00 mark

Unofficial Court Report: EK Ethereal Court 7