Aibhilin inghean Ui Phaidin - Court Barony

O My Queen, O Caoilfhionn,said Ardrí Brennan, What are the
dues of a Baroness of a Barony of the East?
Not hard to tell, said Ardrígain Caoilfhionn.
She has attentive service
She has love for this land
She has welcome for all companies
All in service to her Barony of Iron Bog

O My king, O Brennan, said Ardrígain Caoilfhionn Has Our Aibhilin inghean Ui Phaidin achieved these goals? 
Not hard to tell, said Ardrí Brennan

She has walked for her populous,

She has looked of her populous

She has heard of her populous

All in service to her Barony of Iron Bog

And so People of the East, say to Their Majesties, what is best

for Her today?

Not hard to tell, say We.

Let Us heap her with praise

Let Us grant her reward
Let Us bestow upon her the rank of Baroness of Our Court

To whit Per chevron purpure and argent, three Lacy knots in chevron argent and an iris purpure slipped and leaved vert.

Let it be Done, today at the Iron Bog Investiture, AS LVIII

Wordcount 160

Illumination by Ellesbeth Donofrey

Calligraphy by Katherine Barr

About a BLOG I'll sing a song
Sing rickety-tickety-tin

I was so pleased to get this assignment! One of my first wordsmith assignments was to write her Award of Arms.  I had a brief description of what she did and her name and I managed to pull together a scroll from that.  Now to my joy, years later, I am writing her Court Barony Scroll as she steps down from her territorial baronial seat!

Originally I was looking at one of the variants of Irish Poetry: SELECTIONS FROM
ANCIENT IRISH POETRY. Continuing the search I found Irish Bardic Poetry and The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland.  One particular poem stood out, The Instructions of the High King. Then my husband, with amazing internet skills, found The Instructions of King Cormac Mac Airt which as far as we could tell was the original translation that the other sources were using.  With such an inspiration I chose to embrace the Bardic Prose Style and not the poetry style of which I am so fond of.
The text of the scroll has many phrases that are simply taken from the translation and tweaked a bit to fit the SCAdian aesthetic. 
VERSE ONE
O My Queen, O Caoilfhionn, said Ardrí Brennan, What are the
dues of a Baroness of a Barony of the East?
Not hard to tell, said Ardrígain Caoilfhionn.
The original, “Instructions of King Cormac” is set around a series of questions of a son to the king about how to be a good ruler.  I chose to keep the same question and answer format, but change it so that the first verse is the question asked by the king and answered by the queen.  The second verse is asked by the queen and answered by the queen.  The last section is the people of the East asking the question and answered by Their Majesties in tandem.
The repetition was a tool used in the Bardic poetry to aid remembering the long epics and in their performance.

She has attentive service
She has love for this land
She has welcome for all companies
While each of these sentences came from the original source, these were not in the same format as so many of the other verses.  There was no unity of sentence.  For the sake of the scroll I added “She has” to the beginning of each.  I wanted the conformity of the question and answer milieu to be consistent in each section.
There is not much original content here.  All of these sentences were in the original poem.  Most of my changes were in format.

All in service to her Barony of Iron Bog
Several of the verses/sections of the original poem ended with “All those are the dues of a chief and of an ale- house, said Cormac to Carbre.” This version became my end sentence for the first two verses.
I chose to omit the re-rendering of who said what to whom, in an effort to keep the word count down.  The source material is very heavy with the repetition of words.

VERSE TWO
O My king, O Brennan, said Ardrígain Caoilfhionn Has Our Aibhilin inghean Ui Phaidin achieved these goals? 
Not hard to tell, said Ardrí Brennan
This is the perspective switch. With the Queen asking the question to the King.  I made sure to Their Majesties preferred titles. I wanted to make it fairly formal, mirroring the source material.

She has walked for her populous,
She has looked of her populous
She has heard of her populous
This went through several iterations. The original was:
Walking about of feet,
Looking of eyes, for crimes of mouth,
With hearing of ears
I really liked the walked/feet, looked/eyes, and hearing/eyes. 
I wanted to keep the same format as the first verse and ended up with really a flavor of the original. 

All in service to her Barony of Iron Bog
The closing verse line again, in a direct repeat of the first. 

VERSE THREE 
And so People of the East, say to Their Majesties, what is best
for Her today?
Not hard to tell, say We.
Here in the last verse I repeat the same format of the first two verses, but the perspective has changed from a conversation between Their Majesties to Their Majesties and the People of the East.

Let Us heap her with praise
Let Us grant her reward
Let Us bestow upon her the rank of 
Baroness of Our Court
In this last verse I ended the verse with the naming of the award. This was what the first two verses were leading to, the naming of the award.

To whit Per chevron purpure and argent, three Lacy knots in chevron argent and an iris purpure slipped and leaved vert.
Let's talk about last minute saves! As I was writing this blog post and re-examining every line written. I got to this part of the scroll, where it is winding up the information and noticed that I had not included her arms! 
They were not included in the recommendation form nor, unusually, her wiki. Luckily for me, my husband is a fine hand on the internet and found them for me on the O & R. 
There was a brief flurry of messages and the proper words were sent to the illuminator, Katherine Barr. Who was just about to send everything to the calligrapher. I got the changes made just in time! I am just as glad I decided to write this up sooner, rather than later! 

Let it be Done, today at the Iron Bog Investiture, AS LVIII
In the end, this was not a scroll where all the required information was worked into the body of the scroll. However unlike the ones where the poetry style is broken and the addition is tacked on in the end, the language here matches the rest of the piece. Even with the rushed addition of the arms, the flow of the words did not have to change. 

This opportunity was unprecedented and amazing. 13 years ago, I had begun my journey into this world of wordsmithing. The recipient's Award of Arms was one of the first few I wrote! The added bonus is that the recipient is now a friend. Writing for people you love is the best part of this job! 

Photo by Aislinn Chiabach

Photo by Aislinn Chiabach