Mi Contra Fa

Last-Minute KASF Stuff

Smackdown Poem 3 begins:

Agolant, wise king, sat with Charlemagne to dine
Hoping peaceful resolution with him to find
A treaty to make, al-Andalous spared war vile
He looks about the table and asks his host why
His men are clothed differently, in different styles.

"Those in robes of single hue are priests, holy men,"
Answered the Franish king, "Who offer grace from heaven."
"In black, the monks. They pray and scribe gospel with pen.
Through the work of both, we are spared from Satan's web."

Then spied Agolant thirty men in filthy rags,
Sitting in the dirt, they had no (something) , eating scraps

Assonance is hard, y'all! I may have to finish this on paper, day-of or something.  I haven't done anything so last-minute in ages!

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Roland is printed out, have to make sure it made it into the binder. And/or frame. I've heard some other bards mention they wanted a translation (I think it was Master Efenwealt on the Performer's Guild list?) so putting it 'out there' in case anyone wants to use it might be a good idea.

'Thor and the Moose' is not getting a frame.

Should print out Smackdown poems that are complete. Performing copies, copies for binder.  Copies for Poeta? *madly scatters papers into the air* Copies for everybody!

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Need to decide if the poster stand works to hold the lyre.

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Garb is packed.  Most A&S stuff is packed. Select instrument(s) to bring.  Need to pack feast gear, snacks, mundane toiletries, music for car ride.  Tonight, since I'm leaving from work tomorrow. Also, replace windshield wiper blade.

 

Harley Psalter Satchel

Color Plate H in Gale Owen-Crocker's "Dress in Anglo-Saxon England" shows a page from the Harley Psalter.  Specifically folio 66 verso, Psalm 127.  Above the text, the illumination shows builders constructing a house, which makes sense given the psalm begins "Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain."  Below, three other scenes are shown: a man washing the feet of three other men, a king and a queen (I think) being served at table by three servants, and a king being handed a satchel by a crowd of men.  I'm not quite sure how these tie in.

But! The satchel!  The Harley Psalter is dated 1020-1030 CE, which is far and away from my usual 7th century garb, but it's the only representation of an Anglo-Saxon satchel I'm aware of (aside from a simple hand-carried sack on the Franks Casket).  It's almost certainly the source of the Regia Angolorum leather satchel shown here. 

I make a quickie trial version.  No measuring proportions or anything clever like that, just found some old cotton duck in my fabric stash and cut out a longer-than-wide satchel with a double-thickness trapezoidal top flap.  Being short on time, I used an old tablet woven belt for the carrying strap, and pinned it on with my two "Arnegunde" brooches.  The satchel is shown with three tassels on the top flap, and since the fabric is black, the pins and red and gold, and the strap is brown and cream and gold, I used some gold 'thread' I had around to make tassels.

I'll post pictures when I get a chance. Not bad for an hour or two's work, and easier to carry than my old basket (which is cracking, has holes, and small things now fall out of.)  I made sure to make it big enough to hold a folder of papers.  Maybe not a 2" binder, but I can slide some documentation in there if I need to.

KASF Smackdown 4

"Poet's choice," time period 1250-1492. The rondeau is a 13th-15th cen form. It changed and evolved, but as late as Machaut a simple 8-line ABaAabAB line could be used.  I tried this one without regular English meter for a change.

All the dishes are washed and dried
My loving heart weeps with gladness
I returned to our home and sighed
- All the dishes are washed and dried -
Thus I know that here, love abides
And I feel no scorn or sadness
All the dishes are washed and dried
My loving heart weeps with gladness

KASF Smackdown 3

A praise poem, from either 1000-1250 or 1250-1492.

Well, the chansons de geste are good, solid 12th century stuff and of interest to me.

Song of Roland: 12-syllable alexandrines arranged in laisses of irregular length, each line ending in assonance (not strict rhyme).  Typically a caesura after the 4th syllable.

Poema del Mio Cid: 14 or 16(ish) syllable lines also linked by assonance.

But who to praise?  Looking over the cast of 'Roland,' and recognizing that I have a translation of the Norwegian 'Song of Roland' in my book, I thought: How about somebody from the other team?

Agolant looks like a good bet, a noble African king from across the sea, come to free God's people from the northern barbarians.  Historia Caroli Magni.  Aspremont.

EDIT: Thomas Rodd's 1812 translation of the Historia Caroli Magni, in which Agolant is termed "Argolander."  May provide an incident to write up.

But then should this be written as a chanson de geste?  Arabic poetry.  Arabic epic literature.  Examples from al-Andalus.  I could go either way on this - in one way, it makes more sense to write it in the form that belongs to the people who would be cheering Agolant.  On the other hand, there's a certain... rightness to casting it as a chanson de geste.

EDIT 2: Oh yeah! Here we go, from Rodd, Chapter 13:

On the third day Argolander attended the King, as he promised, and found him at dinner. Many tables were spread at which the guests were sitting; some in military uniform; some in black; some in Priests' habits; which Argolander perceiving, inquired what they were? "Those you see in robes of one colour," replied the King, "are priests and bishops of our holy religion, who expound the gospel to us, absolve us from our offences, and bestow heavenly benediction. Those in black are monks and abbots; all of them holy men, who implore incessantly the divine favour in our behalf." But in the meantime Argolander espying thirty poor men in mean habiliments, without either table or table-cloth, sitting and eating their scanty meals upon the ground, he inquired what they were? "These," replied the King, "are people of God, the messengers of our Lord Jesus, whom in his and his Apostles names we feed daily." Argolander then made this reply: "The guests at your table are happy; they have plenty of the best food set before them; but those you call the messengers of God, whom you feed in his name, are ill fed, and worse clothed, as if they were of no estimation. Certainly he must serve God but indifferently who treats his messengers in this manner, and thus do you prove your religion false." Argolander then refused to be baptized, and, returning to his army, prepared for battle on the morrow.

*sporfle*

At the current posting time, Mi Contra Fa is rated 950th among Fashion blogs, according to Technorati.  Apparently this is on the strength of posts such as the undying "Arnegunde/Kentish Robe 2," a must for every fashion-forward Frank trying to ape the latest Byzantine styles.

Hey, not bad for an early music and poetry blog. 

A Brief Satire

Naturally, as soon as I decide to hang up that hat, it figures itself out.

An arm as weak as brittle straw
A strike as slow as a frozen stream
A love as hollow as the body of my harp
- This fate to them who abuse the movement of the righteous Spirit

When it was proposed to alter Corpora to explicitly permit the participation of same-sex couples in Crown, a virtual army of strawmen appeared, claiming that some nefarious people might abuse the new rule to give their household twice the chance of gaining the throne: that Sir A and Sir B could fight for each other in the lists.  Or perhaps the boogeyman would be that Sir A would fight for Sir B one list, and then Sir B would fight for Sir A in the next?  I confess I'm not exactly keen on the rules for who may fight, past "current sitting King may not."  But the gist of it was, Sirs A and B would be straight men taking advantage of a rule meant to allow same-sex couples to fight for the ones they hold most dear.

I devoutly hope that no one in our chivalrous and courteous Society would be so brash and so grasping as to twist the rules in this fashion.  If so, this curse be upon them.

Information on early Irish verse isn't easy to come by.  It was apparently very complicated and may not translate well into English forms, but alliteration, consonance and assonance were said to play roles. I think I hit some of that.  The Comic Irishman's second chapter, The Masque of Satire, gives some further examples of early curse-style satire, and the rule of three seems to be in effect.

Looks like class notes on early Irish poetry.

Bibliography and links on medieval Irish poetry.

CELT's page of Irish medieval poetry.

JSTOR article on Praise, Satire and the Early Irish Poet.

 EDIT: Changed out 'righteous' for 'generous.' 

KASF Prep

I've been mostly involved with the administrative side of preparation: getting frames for the poems, stands for the frames, new report covers, labels for same, printing more cards, ordering beads to leave as tokens (amethyst + blue/white glass, both persona-appropriate), packing it all into a bag.

While buying beads, though, I found that you can get stick pins 2.75" long with either a loop or a flat pad at the head.  Both together would have been perfect, but... I got a few of each, so I can chain the loop-headed ones together, and maybe do something spiffy with the pad-headed ones. Garnet cabochon and a touch of glue...?

I also noticed that the "My Little Lyre" documentation breezily blew off cataloguing extant lyre finds. So I did some of that.  I'll post the resulting 17-page annoted bibliography/pile of notes/whatever it is later.

Still to do:

• Finish 'Song of Roland' docs
• Decide what to do about frames for 'Thor and the Moose' and 'Song of Roland'
• Possibly buy more page protectors
• Put labels in page dividers, dividers into binder
• Smackdown poems

The satire in particular is hard!  I may skip it to work on other things, because right now it's just blocking me.