Timbrien, Battle Teacher of the East
Kindred Consules, Tindal and Alberic
Have seen her stellar success supporting
Valkyries of linen learn of the list
A Sorrow Thief, for all female fighters
Done with discussions, and demonstrations
Supporting women of Our warrior’s world
Timbrien’s to take home a Silver Wheel today
Emphatically Earned at this Ephemeral Court
Word count 63
KEY
Kenning
Kenning meaning
Alliterative Pairs
This is a tribute to the tenacious
Timbrien, Battle Teacher WARRIOR of the East
Kindred Consules KINGS (PLURAL), Tindal and Alberic
Have seen her stellar success supporting
Valkyries of linen WOMAN learn of the list
A Sorrow Thief HELPER, for all female fighters
Done with discussions, and demonstrations
Supporting women of Our warrior’s world
Timbrien’s to take home a Silver Wheel today
Emphatically Earned at this Ephemeral Court
This is the greatest and best BLOG in the world…
I was handed this assignment with a very firm time period for the recipient. Her Knight said she favored Norse and Old English and Fiona was leaning toward the Lindisfarne gospel as an inspiration piece. The language of Beowulf seemed the perfect choice. I also had the note that the recipient particularly liked Tenacious D.
In the initial online conversation with Fiona I half jokingly wrote, "This is not the best scroll in the world. It's but a tribute." Then I wrote down ...
This is but a tribute to the tenacious Timbrien
... which had way too many syllables but it was the jumping-off point for the rest of the scroll.
When I work with the alliterative language of Beowulf I try to keep to about 10 syllables per line. Beowulf itself ranged from 8 to 10, or more syllables. Choosing 10 gives me good leeway if there are a couple sentences shorter or longer.
This is a tribute to the tenacious
Timbrien, Battle Teacher of the East
The first sentence of the scroll ended up encompassing 2 lines of verse and the same letter of alliteration. It also included my first kenning in the scroll: "Battle Teacher," which means "warrior." All the Kennings I used for this scroll are from the Skaldic Project.
Kindred Consuls, Tindal and Alberic
The Kenning, Kindred Consuls is a mashup of the kenning, "Kindred of Rulers," which means "kings." I altered it for the sake of alliteration, and then decided to put Their Royal Majesties' preferred titles of Consuls, which also fit. I still get a kick out of using alliterations with different letters.
In the second and third lines, the alliteration is only for two words in the sentence. I normally try to use at least three, but given the information I had to include and the six syllables of proper names, I had to be satisfied with the bare minimum.
Have seen her stellar success supporting
Valkyries of linen learn of the list
These two lines, plus the one naming Their Royal Majesties, form one full thought: how they’ve seen the work the recipient has done. Most of the writeup I received mentioned the
ways the recipient had been working with and for the women of the East in martial activities.
This also included my third Kenning: "Valkyrie of Linen," which means "women."
A Sorrow Thief, for all female fighters
Done with discussions, and demonstrations
Supporting women of Our warrior’s world
I was able to dedicate the next three lines to the recipient's endeavors. The last Kenning I used was, "Sorrow Thief," which means "helper." This spoke to her work as an advocate for women in fighting. Her write up specifically mentioned her creations of weekly classes, virtual discussions, and presentations centered around female heavy combatants and how to improve and support their experiences. I was glad to have quite a bit of space in the scroll to expound on that.
Timbrien’s to take home a Silver Wheel today
This sentence was really a problem child. I worked and reworked it several times, asking more than one person to look at it and offer suggestions. It ended up over my ten-syllable limit by two syllables. I could have left off the final “today," but I felt it needed to be there.
Emphatically Earned at this Ephemeral Court
The last line of the scroll is also two syllables over my arbitrary limit, because I wanted to use two multisyllabic words in the same sentence. I toyed with the idea of using earnestly instead of emphatically, but “Earnestly earned” felt too repetitive.
Between the personal reference that launched the scroll and the lovely, detailed write up I was given, I was able to put the words together with relative ease. The recipient even had an East kingdom Wiki, which had not only a photograph but a link to the Order of Precedence. This made confirming their previous awards a breeze.
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