A poem in ballad form, written on the occasion of the Fiftieth Year of the Society, on the theme "Threads of Gold," as requested by Lady Katarzyna Witkowska, Poeta Atlantiae, for entry into the Knowne World Poetry Competition at Pennsic XLIV (August 2015)
The queen called in her steward good
Before the queen he stands
It’s many years he’s served her well
And heeded her commands
“It’s fifty years ago,” she said
“When first you did find me
Alone there in darkened wood
As lost as lost could be.
“You took me in and raised me up
A lady of me made
This hall you built and peopled it
The best of souls have stayed.
“An empress I, of kingdoms wide
That reach from East to West.
You got them all for me, my lord;
Of stewards, you are the best.
“You won them not by force of arms
Instead by strength of heart,
In all my lands, we have no war
There’s peace in every part.
“For fifty years, you’ve served me well
And brought me golden fame
All o’er the world, my praises sung
Now many know my name.
“You are the one who told my tale
And made sing all the bards
For this, today, my faithful steward,
I’d give you a reward.”
The steward made to answer her,
“I ask for nought, my queen,
It’s been my honor and my joy
To serve yourself, the Dream.
“I am no soldier, conquering far -
Those kingdoms, East to West,
Looked on your face, and knew at once,
To serve you was their quest.
“I do not prompt the bards to sing
With harp and joy and mirth;
They simply see, with their own eyes,
Your beauty and your worth.
“In serving you, I have found honor
And treasures of the mind,
But the pay that I’ve loved best
Are folk both good and kind.
“They gather in your service,
All these kindred souls,
Their company I’d not exchange
For silver or for gold.”
The queen, the Dream, she smiled down,
“So good and humble, too;
But my steward, it would me please
To give a gift to you.”
“If it please you, lady,
I shall not say you nay.”
“Then come here, my gracious steward,
Come here without delay.”
She’s made a banner for the steward
All made by her own hand
It gleams with threads of purest gold
Sewn down with silken bands
A field of gold with greeney leaves
All in a laurel wreath
It hangs from off a standard tall;
The steward stands underneath
“I’ll treasure it, my lady fair,”
Replied the valiant steward,
“No gemstones I’ll prize more than this;
Your flag I’ll keep and guard.
“I’ll keep and guard your flag, my queen,
In darkness and in sun,
For fifty years, then fifty more
Til all our days are done.”
Documentation (Such as it is)
My muse, my skill, and my timeline couldn’t agree on this one. I did an A&S project on Anglo-Saxon goldworked pennons back in October, and I’m good with Old English verse. But the lady/steward conversation, and particularly the steward’s initial refusal of reward, doesn’t fit with the mead hall ethos. It felt like it would work better as a troubador lai. But then I got to be in a hurry to write it for the deadline, and when I sat down, a ballad came out.
Ballads, rhyming poems in English with an ABCB scheme and (roughly - there are many exceptions) 8-6-8-6 iambic meter, date back to the 15th century.
I scoured Master Gregory Blount’s Sixteenth Century Ballad site for some references to back this piece up. Ballads cover a lot of ground - love songs, songs about Queen Elizabeth, bawdy songs, anti-papist songs. Without pretending to do a survey of common tropes or themes, I did find one example of a dialogue between a lord and lady, and an example of two abstract ideals conversing.
“A handful of pleasant delights, containing sundry new sonnets and delectable histories in divers kinds of metre &c,” originally published in 1584 by Clement Robinson and “divers others,” was edited and republished by Edward Arber in 1878. On pages 7-8, it includes “L. Gibsons Taranta, wherin Danea welcommeth come her Lord Diophon from the war.” The husband and wife heap mutual praise on each other, much like my steward and his Queen Dream. It also serves as an example of sketchy meter, with lines taking the 8-6-8-6 syllable count more as guidelines than rules. (It also features a chorus of onomatopoeic horn sounds.) An extract from the middle of the poem serves as an example:
“...A ioifull sight my hearts delight,
my Diophon deere:
Thy comely grace, I do embrace,
with ioiful cheere:
Tantara tara tantara,
what pleasant sound this is,
Which brought to me with victorie,
my ioy and onely blisse.
Tantara tara tantara, &c.
Diophon.
My Queene and wife, my ioy and life
in whome I mind:
In euery part, the trustiest hart,
that man can finde.
Tantara tara tantara,
me thinks I hear your praise,
Your vertues race in euerie place,
which trumpet so doth raise.
Tantara tara tantara, &c.
[Danea.]
Now welcome home to Siria soile,
from battered field:
That valiantly thy foes did foile,
with spear and shield:
Tantara tara tantara,
me thinks I heare it still
They sounding praise, abroad to raise,
with trump that is most shrill,
Tantara tara tantara, &c.
Thomas Deloney lived in the 16th and 17th centuries, and the next example comes from one of his slightly post-period publications. “The Garland of Good Will” was originally published in 1631. Master Gregory makes available a scan of a transcription of the 1631 original printed in 1912, edited by F. O. Mann and published by Oxford University Press. One of the ballads in it is “A pleasant Dialogue betweene plaine Truth, and blind Ignorance,” which shows two allegorical figures having a conversation. Since my ballad is largely a conversation between two allegorical figures (The Dream and The SCA), I include an excerpt from it as documentation. (The transcription has some odd spellings; I’m not sure if that’s a feature of the original, to make Ignorance talk in dialect, or if it’s an attempt to render old fonts (like the long ‘s’ that looks like an ‘f’ to us) in modern type.)
Truth.
God speed you, aged Father,
and giue you a good day:
What is the cause I pray you,
so sadly here to stay:
And that you keepe such gazing
on this decaied place:
The which for superstition
good Princes downe did race.
Ignorance.
Chill tell thee by my vazonne
that sometime che haue knowne
A vaire and goodly Abbey,
stand here of brick and stone:
And many holy Friers,
as ich may zay to thee:
Within these goodly Cloysters
che did full often zee.
Golden Banners
At least three goldworked banners are mentioned in Beowulf: burned for Scyld’s funeral, given to Beowulf by Hrothgar, and in the dragon’s hoard. The famous French standard, the Oriflamme, literally means “golden flame,” and is depicted in art as a red banner with a golden sun or flame upon it. Most extant examples of opus anglicanum, English goldwork, are ecclesiastical accoutrements, such as the Maniple and Stole of St. Cuthbert. It reached its height as an art form in the 12th-14th centuries, but ballads frequently dealt with antique subject matter (such as the ballads of Robin Hood).
Goldwork is either done by surface couching gold threads to fabric (early) or using couching stitches to pull a small bubble of gold thread to the reverse of the fabric, creating a joint that makes the finished piece more flexible (later). It’s a legitimate period embroidery using threads of gold.
Sources
Greg Lindahl (Master Gregory Blount of Isenfir). “Sixteenth Century Ballads.” http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/ballads/
This is a collection of links to transcriptions or scans of extant ballads, or 19th century reprints of 16th cen. manuscripts.
A link to Master Gregory’s page for “A handful of pleasant delights, containing sundry new sonnets and delectable histories in divers kinds of metre &c”:
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/ballads/handful.html
A link to the Archive.org scan of the book, open to the page where I got the poem:
“L. Gibsons Taranta, wherin Danea welcommeth come her Lord Diophon from the war.”
https://archive.org/stream/handfulofpleasan00robiuoft#page/16/mode/2up
The 1912 transcription of the 1631 “Garland of Good Will”:
http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/deloney/goodwill/
My Chalice of the Sun God documentation on goldwork banners is at:
http://moeticae.typepad.com/files/star-spangledbanner.pdf
Jill Ivy. Embroideries at Durham Cathedral. Robert Attey and Sons: Sunderland, England, 1992.
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