[Bards] Repertoire Expansion

willow Taylor willowjonbardc at juno.com
Wed Jun 18 21:59:08 PDT 2003


Dear  Ld Charles MacKinnon

They were not doing any thing when I joined the SCA. In fact they were
not doing anything when I came to this area in AS 8. We still were not
doing much when His Grace  and I were 18th Crown of Atenvelt.(1978-79)  I
remember my lord and I were at an event in Border March. It was Zane's
christening? There was a performer who got up and did the" Rising of the
Star" and then did some really bad filk. Jonathan said "Why can't we have
something more. Like stories about people feats." We decided that stories
might be a way to start people into performing. Later that month we
chartered the Queen's bards of Atenvelt. If you look hard at it stories
are the start of everything. After a while people get tired of the same
old stories so they turn them into poems, then people put music to poems
and you get songs. The Queen's Bard sponsored the telling of tales in
music, poems and stories. We made three chapters, In each of the
principalities of the kingdom. The only one that grew was the one in
Ansteorra. When we became the first King and Queen of Ansteorra I made
sure the Queen's Bards were chartered in our kingdom. The other chapters
died out. 

I am misrepresenting this a little. The groups up and down I-35 were
doing stories and songs before this. My family, the Clan Caldal put out a
song book  and if I can find it I will reprint it here. The folks in
Stargate had some song books with their songs in it. Ansteorra was split
at the time so we had political groups with different songs. The group I
was in was heavily into persona so we did a lot of songs we thought were
in the spirit of the middle ages. Steeleyes Span was very popular. Songs
like Tan Lin, Matty Groves, Barbara Allen, Gypsy Rover, Rose, Rose, Rose
and Misty Morning were very popular.The older the Ballad the better. Of
course this wasn't  100% true.  Parcel of Rogues was sung at almost every
event. When Namron got into the loop a lot of the Irish Revolutionary
songs became popular. They were a lot of songs that make you feel. It
felt right that our personas were singing these things. We did a lot of
stories too. Telling stories is persona activity. We told tales of the
history. One of my favorite memories is of Red Orm telling of the death
of St. Olaf.  We told Norse sagas and Irish tales. Almost everybody knew
the Irish stories. We told bad stories about people we were suppose to
know in our personas. Master Bjorn Magusson told gossip about Harold
Hardrada. Anyway it was a lot fun. I miss it. 

I will try to find some of the ancient stuff.  By the way there are two
times in our history, the old times and the ancient times. I come from
the ancient times. 

Willow
'

> 
> Your Grace,
> piece that you remember from when you first joined, or that predates 
> you
> in the Society.
> 
>
>
> Bryn Gwlad
> 
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> Bards at ansteorra.org
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> 


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