[Ansteorra] FWD: [Bards] Goliards

Michael Kahn Kahn at West-Point.org
Mon Jun 9 21:02:19 PDT 2008


Thank you for clarifying.  By your description, Goliards represent the 
sort of people that I have disliked.  By your own words, you are saying 
that Goliards are basically arrogant freeloaders who owed their very 
survival to other, better people and didn't have the decency to 
demonstrate the least bit of appreciation or respect for that assistance.

The Crown (through Their landed nobility) saw something in me worthy of 
an Award of Arms, thereby welcoming me into the lower echelons of 
nobility in this feudal system.  In this feudal system, the lands upon 
which I reside and from which I earn my sustenance belong to the Crown.  
Though we select our Sovereign through a Crown Tournament, as a 15th 
century Englishman, my King and Queen occupy the throne by Divine 
Right.  They have invested power in certain nobles to assist in the 
administration of Their lands.  I owe fealty to these nobles and to the 
Crown.  Because the King and Queen sit the throne by Divine Right, I'm 
sure you must understand how I feel about people who would challenge 
this Divine order.

Throughout my life, I have noticed that it is far easier to change a 
group from the inside than it is to do so by standing outside a group 
hurling epithets at them.  I have great respect for anyone who will make 
the effort to join a group and win over people to the ideas they 
propose.  I have nothing but disdain for those who will stand outside a 
group - particularly one whose members are quite happy with how things 
work - rudely informing them that they are doing it all wrong and must 
change.  I like this game we play as it is, which is why I am playing 
it.  If you also like it, please join us.  If you are going to hurl 
epithets and generally act like rebellious ingrates, please go away, 
because that is not The Dream that I want to play.

This *is* my Dream.  When a friend I always called by name becomes 
landed nobility and I see him or her at an event, I address him or her 
as "Your Excellency."  I accept that the Crown has chosen Their 
representative, and I accept the direction that the Crown's 
representatives choose to lead their Baronies.  If I do not like that 
direction, I will make *polite* suggestions at appropriate (and 
discrete) times.  I am willing to either have the patience to wait for 
landed nobility to step down or to select a different Barony with which 
to associate.

If you feel a strong desire to change the way we play this game of ours, 
should you not consider whether *this* is the game you should be 
playing?  If you are being disruptive because there were disruptive 
people in period, should you not be polite enough to realize that the 
vast majority of us do not wish for you to disrupt our game?

  In Service to The Dream As It Is,
    Miles Grey


an angel in black ink wrote:

>[Goliards] were basically medieval hippies.
>
>They were part of medieval European student culture from about the 11th-12th
>century onward: they appeared at the rise of the great Universities of the
>Continent, especially in Paris, and continued...to this day, really.
>
>They were the bad company you fell into when you moved away from home for
>the first time and lived in a university town on money that wasn't your own.
>They were the dropouts, flunk-outs and kick-outs who still managed to hang
>around somehow, getting drunk, getting laid and getting into trouble.  Think
>of National Lampoon's Animal House in the 12th century, and you've pretty
>much got it.
>
>They took their name from "Golias" a sort of deity or patron saint that they
>invented or half-invented, and who was associated, sort of like Bacchus,
>with drink and revelry, and sort of like Apollo with music.
>
>So why are they so interesting?  Well, because they wrote a lot of poetry,
>all of it very, very unconventional by the standards of the time, and some
>of it quite good.  It could be bawdy or chaste, reverent or blasphemous,
>philosophical, lyrical, bibulous, humorous or philosophical. Good or bad, it
>makes for much more interesting reading than most of the court-poetry of the
>age.
>
>For some good examples of this kind of stuff, google "Carmina Burana" and
>"Francois Villon" (though Villon came a bit lat to really be called a
>Goliard).
>
>  
>




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