Illumination by Ellesbeth Donofrey
KEY - Ottava Rima (15thC Italian stanza)
11-syllable lines
changed words
A
B
A
B
A
B
C
C
A Eastern Crowns: King Matthias! Queen Feilinn!
B In this, Our own Buckland Cross Barony
A Of Our vast and glorious East therein
B Having heard of a great disparity.
A To rectify this gap let Us begin
B To repair this irregularity
C We’ll award this fighter's abundant feats
C But first to hear their myriad receipts
A Ezra Dei Bazzi: On the field causes frights
B Standing resplendent in kit of brocade
A Combat progress in honorable fights
B With prowess in her favored shield and blade
A This 12th night We'll raise Ezra to new heights
B As such, this Silver Tyger is now made
C Observing martial skills come to flower
C We see this Tyger using their power
FIXED WORDS - Orange represents the changed words
A Eastern Crowns: King Matthias! and Queen Feilinn!
B Here in this, Our own Buckland Cross Barony
A Of this Our vast and glorious East therein
B Having heard of the greatest disparity.
A To rectify this vacuum let Us begin
B To repair this rank irregularity
C We will award this fighter's abundant feats
C But first to hear of their myriad receipts
A Ezra Dei Bazzi: On the field causes frights
B Standing resplendent in kit of fine brocade
A Combat improvement in honorable fights
B Showing prowess in her favored shield and blade
A This 12th night We will raise Ezra to new heights
B As such, today’s Silver Tyger is now made
C Observing their martial skills come to flower
C We see this haleTyger wielding their power
Leave the BLOG, take the cannoli!
The recipient has a wonderfully detailed EK wiki entry that lists their persona as 15th Century Italian, specifically Florencian.
The first search garnered Italian Literature:
“Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (Orlando Mad; translated into English as Orlando Furioso), published in 1516”
I was a little frustrated. Britanica usually garnered more links and avenues for further research. It was only in writing this blog did I discover that it was Britanica for kids. However this was in the very early stages of the scroll research and it did garner the one name that did lead to the poetry form used in the scroll.
The name Orlando Furioso garnered a wikipedia link.
“The earliest version appeared in 1516, although the poem was not published in its complete form until 1532.” and “The poem is divided into forty-six cantos, each containing a variable number of eight-line stanzas in ottava rima”
Which lead the search to Ottava rima
“Ottava rima is a rhyming stanza form of Italian origin. Originally used for long poems on heroic themes, it later came to be popular in the writing of mock-heroic works. Its earliest known use is in the writings of Giovanni Boccaccio.
The ottava rima stanza in English consists of eight iambic lines, usually iambic pentameters. Each stanza consists of three alternate rhymes and one double rhyme, following the ABABABCC rhyme scheme.”
Searches for Ottava rima garnered (the actual Britannica entry):
Ottava rima
“15thC Italian stanza form composed of eight 11-syllable lines, rhyming ABABABCC”
From the The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics
“OTTAVA RIMA . Though now widely dispersed in various Western langs., largely because of the fame of Lord Byron’s masterpiece Don Juan , ottava rima (or ottava toscana ; Ger. stanze ; Rus. oktava ) originated as an *Italian prosody, an *octave stanza in *hendecasyllables 11 syllables] rhyming ABABABCC.”
With the poetic form decided I went to the original poem found and copied some verses to have before my eyes as I composed the scroll:
Orlando Furioso/Canto I Translations
“Angelica, whom pressing danger frights,
Flies in disorder through the greenwood shade.
Rinaldo's horse escapes: he, following, fights
Ferrau, the Spaniard, in a forest glade.
A second oath the haughty paynim plights,
And keeps it better than the first he made.
King Sacripant regains his long-lost treasure;
But good Rinaldo mars his promised pleasure.
OF LOVES and LADIES, KNIGHTS and ARMS, I sing,
Of COURTESIES, and many a DARING FEAT;
And from those ancient days my story bring,
When Moors from Afric passed in hostile fleet,
And ravaged France, with Agramant their king,
Flushed with his youthful rage and furious heat,
Who on king Charles', the Roman emperor's head
Had vowed due vengeance for Troyano dead.”
ELEVEN syllables not TEN!
(Mid-BLOG re-title)
There's just so much to work through. Trust has to be built again on both sides. Can we just skip it? Can, can you just be BLOGGING me now?
~Tara Maclay
I was literally writing the blog for this scroll the Monday before the event. As I sat down to start my line-by-line analysis of the words when I counted the syllables and to my utter horror I discovered that I had written all of them in iambic pentameter instead of hendecasyllables. Simply put: ten instead of eleven syllables.
I sent a frantic message out to Ellesbeth, hoping beyond all hope that the calligraphy hadn’t been done yet. Of course it was the first thing that had been completed. The best compromise that could be reached would be to correct the scroll and send in the new words to be read in Royal Court.
I have made a mistake that was corrected similarly before. In that case both the calligrapher and I accidentally upranked the recipient. A third party noticed it before it went out in court. We were able to adjust the cheat sheet for the Heralds and it was read out correctly. This error certainly left an impression on me and I haven’t made that particular mistake again.
Unfortunately, from my perspective, the calligraphy was already completed.
The best solution we could come up with was for the cheat-sheet that the heralds read, will have the corrected poetry and that will be read out in court.
In comparing both versions, all rhyming words remained exactly as I had written before. There are only internal changes.
Orange represents the changed words for the new Syllable count
FIRST VERSE CORRECTED WORDS
A Eastern Crowns: King Matthias! and Queen Feilinn!
I started the ball rolling with their Majesties. Adding the extra syllable here was easy. Previously in the composition process, it had been removed to fit into the erroneous syllable count.
B Here in this, Our own Buckland Cross Barony
Although the addition here looks simple, it was one of the last ones to be completed. For the sake of the rhyme I had chosen “barony” and as such I was not changing it. When I get stuck like that, I wait and give it some time, circling back to this sentence at the end and I found the word to add.
A Of this Our vast and glorious East therein
Her Majesty's name has a surprising amount of applicable rhymes. I will be sad to see the next set of Royal Rhymes come about.
B Having heard of the greatest disparity.
The Silver Tyger will be the first award that the recipient receives for solely their own merits.Using the language to emphasize this is well withing the aspects of the wordsmith!
A To rectify this vacuum let Us begin
I changed “gap” to “vacuum.” A simple enough change that I like even better than the original word choice. The etymology of vacuum goes to the 1500s with its latin roots going even further back. While I don’t necessarily restrict the vocabulary I use to the exact time period of the poetry, I do try and make sure they are from 1600 or earlier.
B To repair this rank irregularity
While this sentence is essentially a repetition of the one before it, it does serve the purpose of clarifying what the award does. All that was added was the one syllable word, “rank.” Which served to make the sentence more focused toward its purpose.
C We will award this fighter's abundant feats
For the additional syllable I simply broke a contraction to its base two words. This is the first line that martial arts are mentioned in the scroll.
C But first to hear of their myriad receipts
Receipt goes back to the 14th century, with the myriad of definitions going back to the 15th. The context here is of a record of the recipient's acts. While it may fudge the definition the context in the scroll makes the word applicable.
SECOND VERE - VERSE CORRECTED WORDS
A Ezra Dei Bazzi: On the field causes frights
“Fights, Frights and Flights” are rhymes found in the translation piece above. This is the one line that didn’t change because I had started with an eleven syllable error, so I thought, which worked out for me. When the syllable count is a little long because of the recipient’s name, I usually give myself a little leeway.
B Standing resplendent in kit of fine brocade
“Glade and made” were also from the source material. I changed “glade” to “brocade.” The recipient’s outstanding kit was mentioned prominently in the recommendation. While the photo in their wiki does not show the recipient in garb made of a brocade weave, I felt the fabric reference was a strong enough rhyme to include it.
To make the syllable count work, I added fine before brocade, to further enhance the quality of their fighting garb.
A Combat improvement in honorable fights
While I liked progress, rather than improvement.
Progress would have been the better choice had I found the extra syllable elsewhere. However it remained the best reshuffling of the words. To simply add, and start with a “the” did not seem to me to properly describe the recipient.
B Showing prowess in her favored shield and blade
“With” to “showing” was a simple enough change that kept the flow of this sentence.
Their recommendation referenced the recipient’s preferred weapons style and adding such details makes the end result so much more detailed and will hopefully resonate with the recipient.
A This 12th night We will raise Ezra to new heights
“To new heights” proved to be etymologically vague. While its evolution as a phrase was described in several sources, the idiom itself proved elusive.
The syllable addition here was, again, to simply break a contraction.
In the rhyme set from the original piece, flights was the rhyme word and a nice bit of alliteration to. However, “flights” did not work in this context and I changed it to “heights.” This award will change the recipient’s rank in the East Kingdom so using the phrase raising one to new heights was applicable.
B As such, today’s Silver Tyger is now made
The change for the syllable count here, while a bit different from the original, “Today” turned it from a sentence simply about the recipient to one that grounded the award in the day it was given out. As both versions of the sentence are applicable, and this change was used in the version read out in court.
C Observing their martial skills come to flower
Adding the pronoun above, like the sentence before, changed the perspective. It was a simple enough change and kept the flow of the meaning being conveyed. This pentumulate sentence brings the perspective back to Their Royal Majesties, in preparation for the final conclusion. I used “flower” here as a lead to “power” directly following. I wanted to emphasize that this fighter was beginning their journey in the Martial Fields and essentially blooming in their new skills.
C We see this hale Tyger wielding their power
“Hale” was inserted here to imply a strong person.
Which lead to the conclusionary sentence of the scroll, from TRM celebrating the recipient in their chosen role.
In retrospect, did I have to adjust the words to be read out in court? Probably not. The use of 10 syllables throughout the scroll was consistent and the likelihood of anyone noticing was very small. I wanted the changes because the error was so frustrating. All that research was done, all the effort put forth, and then I simply forgot during the composition.
But we move on, adapt, and come to reasonable solutions.
The physical scroll could not be changed. Calligraphy had been completed weeks before. Thankfully, one scroll can have four separate parts and the last part belongs to the Herald. Reading out the corrected words in court became the best solution.
The herald got the new words and the recipient received their award with the same joy that it was created with and none of the frustration.
No comments:
Post a Comment