Dominico of Settmour Swamp - Silver Rapier

Sharp and on Point We find Dominico
Ideally represents what fencing is.
Lo, do We Ioaness & Honig the 
Virtuous Rulers of these incredible 
Eastern Lands -  
Regarding his prowess on the fields and 
Reports of study, teaching and service 
Arrange today for him to be bestowed
Praise and a deserved Silver Rapier
In Our words, at Mudthaw, Return to the Mud
Encompassed by Our Barony of Settmour Swamp
Received on March 26th, AS LVI

Word Count 73

Being a

Literary catalog

Of

Garrulous excess

When I got this assignment, the only information I had was that Magdalena was planning on fitting the scroll to an 8x10 sheet of paper - considerably smaller than some of her pieces in the past.  So I knew I would have to keep the word count down.  

 

Not having any particular theme or time period, I toyed around with a couple of styles.  The recipient’s wiki had few details but a couple of photos showed him in later period garb, so I didn’t want to write it in any of the Norse or Chaucer styles. But I also didn't want to go too late in period as that might mean iambic pentameter - where angels fear to tread (or at least I do).

Then I remembered about Acrostic Poetry!  Its usage covers many centuries from Ancient Greece through the Renaissance.  The Dutch National Anthem  is acrostic and spells out Willem van Nassovon (William the “Silent”) each verse, and dates back to 1572.

I chose to make the scroll an acrostic on SILVER RAPIER, and spelled that vertically down the page:

S

I

L

V

E

R

R

A

P

I

E

R

I wrote each line and then adjusted the first word to make it begin with the correct letter. I started with a number of fencing puns I'd found, such as “Sharp and on point.” I gave myself a 10 syllable limit per line and then promptly ignored it throughout the scroll.

S Sharp and on Point We find Dominico

I Ideally represents what fencing is.

L Lo, do We Ioaness & Honig the 

V Virtuous Rulers of these incredible 

E  Eastern Lands -  

R Regarding his prowess on the fields and 

R  Reports of study, teaching and service 

A Arrange today for him to be bestowed

P Praise and a deserved Silver Rapier

I In Our words, at Mudthaw, Return to the Mud

E Encompassed by Our Barony of Settmour Swamp

R Received on March 26th, AS LVI

I felt I hit the beats of the scroll and required bits of information well.  I kept it to 73 words which should easily fit. I definitely leaned hard on Thesaurus.com and members of my household to think of appropriate words - that's how I landed on “Encompassed” which was a fun word to work in!

This scroll was fun to write and came together well. I need to remember to do them again.  There are a lot of variants to the acrostic poem that are period and even more difficult and I look forward to the challenge!

Photo by Chana Freidl the Maker

                       

East Kingdom Gazette: Court Report: Mudthaw- Return to the Mud

Aine ingen Fháeláin - Silver Wheel

The blossoms quickly spring and swell
on every tree and in the dell:

It’s time to Return to the Mud
Mudthaw! When flowers start to bud

Our adroit Âine ingen Fháeláin 

Denizen within Our domain

Of the great Eastern Lands receives

The Silver Wheel amongst new leaves

Exchequer! Service with the books

Has caused the royal heads to look 

Ioannes and Ro Honig see

Âine working, busy as the bee

Imperator's’ will comes to pass

As muddy fields make way to grass 

These accolades bestowed today

March 26th without delay
In Settmour Swamp’s great Barony                

With Our Royal authority

Word count 99

The blossoms quickly spring and swell
on every tree and in the dell:

It’s time to Return to the Mud
Mudthaw! When flowers start to bud

Our adroit Âine ingen Fháeláin 
Denizen within Our domain

Of the great Eastern Lands receives
The Silver Wheel amongst new leaves

Exchequer! Service with the books
Has caused the royal heads to look 

Ioannes and Ro Honig see
Âine working, busy as the bee

Imperators’ will comes to pass
As muddy fields make way to grass 

These accolades bestowed today
March 26th without delay

In Settmour Swamp’s great Barony                
With Our Royal authority

BLOG sweet nightingale

BLOG sweet nightingale
HiiiI…..Iiigh above me…

Some quick thoughts of the modern aspect of this game.

Most of my sources are online.  For a rhyming scroll such as this, I use Rhymezone.com. I use Thesaurus.com for all of them. Most of my research is online and I try to include most if not all the links.

I was looking up confirmation for the recipient to see if they needed an Arms to be included with their award. Their name brought up a new quirk: The recipient has a Circumflex Accent over the first letter, A, in their name.  This made the computer unhappy. The carrot: ^, can’t be typed with a letter under it. To make it appear in such things as the header, or in my google docs where I write all my scrolls, I’d have to search to find the code for what the symbol  - which is by no means my area of expertise and probably a whole lot of extra work for one letter in a name that copies and pastes just fine. At least in the text of the blog. The accent does not appear in the header above. It is worth mentioning as it illustrates some of the strange little quirks and idiosyncrasies that anyone faces when using modern resources to work with past materials and techniques.

The persona of the recipient is listed as 12th century English which fits into the octosyllabic rhyme scheme very well.  Instead of just diving into the rhymes, I took a bit of time to look for extant pieces, preferably translated into modern English.  I quickly found The Owl and the Nightingale, “a twelfth- or thirteenth-century Middle English poem detailing a debate between an owl and a nightingale as overheard by the poem's narrator. It is the earliest example in Middle English of a literary form known as debate poetry, or verse contest.”

While I didn’t do this in the format of a debate poem, I have definitely tucked away this technique for future use - something I can get very wordy with! The translated bit of the poem I found inspired the first line of the scroll.

The blossoms quickly spring and swell
on every tree and in the dell:

A great deal of "The Owl and the Nightingale" consists of insults between the two characters, but this couplet is just a beautiful description of spring. I decided to tailor the scroll around it.

This is the translated period quote.

It’s time to Return to the Mud

Mudthaw! When flowers start to bud

I used a full couplet to describe the event. I was glad to be able to include the full title of the event in the limited syllable count.

Our adroit Âine ingen Fháeláin 

Denizen within Our domain

I took a gamble that Fháeláin is pronounced Fae-lain, as every Google search I made seemed to indicate.  This would make the rhyme of “domain” compatible.

Of the great Eastern Lands receives
The Silver Wheel amongst new leaves
I put our kingdom and the award in one couplet. It’s always a juggle with scrolls - what necessary pieces of information to put where.

Exchequer! Service with the books
Has caused the royal heads to look 
This rhyme is a total cheat.  I pluralized one word but not the other.  The only saving grace is that look/book is such an excellent full hit rhyme (to steal a phrase from the Dróttkvætt metre) that it will hopefully not jar the listener out of the rhyme scheme.

Ioannes and Ro Honig see
Âine working, busy as the bee

This couplet, specifically the second line, took quite a bit of thought.  I did not want it to evoke, “busy little bee,” because I thought that might be condescending.  At the same time, I wanted to include it because bees fit my spring/flower theme.  It took much rewriting to get the phrase right.

Imperators’ will comes to pass
As muddy fields make way to grass 
Literally the only reason I used Imperators instead of Emperors was that it had an extra syllable.

I am very glad I got the opportunity to write this lovely scroll.  The illuminator had put a call out on EK Scribes, Emma Makilmone let me take the job and away we went! 

Calligraphy by Aleksei Dmitriev.

Photo by Chana Freidl the Maker

Ranka Otsdottir - Silver Brooch

Blue wood-beasts of Eastern's

Benign Imperators 

Ioannes and Honig

Ideal rulers favors

Realized readiness in

Ranka Otsdottir’s work 

Skilled Word-Smith of poems

Scribe unsaid. We’ll not shirk!

---------------------------------------

We now would have her near

With accolade she gains

Order of Silver Brooch

One with all that contains

At the Aisles of Marche

Advent with capstone arch

Brought about on March 5th

Barony of Stonemarche

Anno Societatis 56

Total  66

WORDS, COLOR CODED:

Key
Kenning
Kenning meaning

Alliterative Pairs

Aðalhending or "full hit" rhyme

Blue wood-beasts [BLUE TYGER/SPARKY] of Eastern's

Benign Imperators 

Ioannes and Honig

Ideal rulers favors

Realized readiness in

Ranka Otsdottir’s work 

Skilled Word-Smith of poems [POET]

Scribe unsaid. We’ll not shirk!

---------------------------------------

We now would have her near

With accolade she gains

Order of Silver Brooch

One with all that contains

At the Aisles of Marche

Advent with capstone arch [AN EVENT IN STONEMARCHE]

Brought about on March 5th

Barony of Stonemarche

Anno Societatis 56

PHENOMENAL COSMIC BLOG! 

ITTY BITTY LIVING SPACE!

Cwen put out a request on the EK Scribes page looking for a wordsmith with experience in Norse. I was tagged in the post, immediately reached out, and got the assignment! She specifically needed a short scroll, quickly, with just enough words to fit into one or two columns, and she requested that I start with an A, B, or D. I chose to use the Dróttkvætt meter and If there is one thing that metre teaches you, it's to not fall in love with a particular phrase until the entire scroll is done. Most of the couplets, I wrote, rewrote … sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters (with apologies to Douglas Adams). I've never attempted a scroll with such a short word count in this metre before, because of the amount of information a scroll needs - and the ever-present problem of trying to squeeze English into Ancient Norse syllabic structure. Each stanza in the Dróttkvætt metre must be eight lines long, and each line six syllables long, with the odd lines of two consecutive couplets rhyming. These rhymes are aðalhending, or "full hit". The even lines are supposed to end in a skothending or "glancing hit" rhyme. However, due to the English/Norse challenges, I have chosen not to even attempt the skothending,"glancing hit" rhyme. The alliterative structure is: A-A--- A----- Blue wood-beasts [Blue Tyger/Sparky] of Eastern's Benign Imperators I think I ended up working on these opening two couplets the longest. I was delighted to start the scroll off with a Kenning. While I took inspiration in the extant kenning the end result became one of my own. I based it on an actual kenning from the Skaldic project: ‘the dark betrayer of the wood-bear of old walls. ’ - CAT I changed bear to beast to be less animal specific. (I have used "Tyger Beast" in previous scrolls.) Blue wood-beast of old walls became a reference to our populace badge, "Sparky. " I shortened it to "blue wood-beast" to fit within the six syllable limit and alliteration Ioannes and Honig Ideal rulers favors Early on I tried to give a full couplet to both monarchs. I even came up with: Eastern Emperor Excellent Ioannes Humble Honig Empress Have heard of Our Ranks ... but then I decided that giving two verses to Their Majesties would take up too much space. The name Ioannes is a bit of a cheat with the rhyme scheme, but necessary and done by choice. Realized readiness in Ranka Otsdottir’s work Like every couplet in the scroll, this one went through many iterations - but the challenge of getting all the moving parts to work in a cohesive manner in English, while still adhering to the ancient metre, is the fun part! Skilled Word-Smith of poems [Poet/Author] Scribe unsaid. We’ll not shirk! This kenning is another adapted from an original: “skilled smith of poetry. ’ - POET.” The only changes I made were to fit into the alliteration and the syllable count. *************************************** After my entry for the 2019 A&S Champions, I discovered that in the Dróttkvætt metre, “there is usually a marked syntactic division at the end of line four to make the whole into two balancing halves.” In the past I've made this division a verbal break of a direct quote from a Norse piece, or used the recipient’s arms. For this piece, like the last time I worked in this meter, I chose to make the rhymes of the first two couplets different from the last two. We now would have her near With accolade she gains In this couplet I started with new rhymes, or “aðalhending.” In these first two we have gains/contains. Order of Silver Brooch One with all that contains This couplet names the award. I was glad that, “Order of '' fits the alliteration perfectly, although I had to drop “the” to fit the syllable count. The recipient did not have an Award of Arms, but will now have one within the accolades of the Silver Brooch. While I didn't say Award of Arms verbatim, I alluded to it in the second line of this couplet. At the Aisles of Marche Advent with capstone arch [An event in Stonemarche] Gotta love it when the name of the event fits so perfectly into the first line of the metre! Then I inadvertently created my own kenning for a Stonemarche event, by referencing the drawbridge's arch in the Baronial arms. Brought about on March 5th Barony of Stonemarche In these last two couplets I essentially used the sound “arch” four times! This would not have been my preference and I tried quite a few variations, but this ended up being the smoothest way to get all the necessary information in. Anno Societatis 56 The last line of the scroll includes the year. I could have created another couplet at this point, but I already had an even number of verses for both columns. I could have extended the scroll a bit and probably have ended up under a hundred words, but the C&I Artist had specifically requested a short scroll, so I decided to break the metre. Latin and ancient Norse really do not mix well. I really enjoyed working on this scroll. I had a short turnaround time and so put an intense amount of work into in a few days. Usually I save the Dróttkvætt metre for longer scrolls, like a Court Barony or an Award of High Merit. I challenged myself in keeping this a shorter piece and I feel I met that challenge quite well. I hope the recipient is happy with it too!

Originally written to go out at Aisles of Marche and Crown A&S Championship

Went out at Great Northeastern War XXXIV

East Kingdom Gazette: GNEW Court Report