SC - German Spa:etzle,

[Huette von Ahrens]

Various people are expressing  opinions on how to start. My own view 
is that it is more fun to start with the primary sources. After you 
have played with them for a while, and formed your own opinions, you 
can then look at what other people have to say.

This is one of the areas where it really is possible for the 
interested amateur to get right to the coal face, as it were--in 
contrast to all of the areas where people are used to taking X's 
description of Y's summary of Z's research as gospel. One advantage 
of doing it that way is that you won't start out taking other 
people's guesses as facts.

When we do our cooking workshops, we try to make sure that the 
novices get untouched recipes--ones we don't have a prior try on--so 
that they can convince themselves, with a little help, that it really 
is possible to start with a recipe written down in period, and end up 
with something good to eat.

On a related point ...  . I was in a thread in a kingdom listserve, 
where someone asked why SCA lady knights didn't use "Dame," that 
being the proper title. I asked whether there was any period evidence 
that Dame was the proper title in period (as opposed to being the 
modern English usage), and suggested several places (Ariosto, in 16th 
c. English translation, and Spencer, both of which have fictional 
lady knights) where evidence might be found. One or two people 
responded to the effect that they had heard, or had read, that "Dame" 
was the period title--as if that was sufficient. Nobody offered any 
evidence. So far as I could tell, people continued in the thread on 
the assumption that someone's third or fourth or fifth hand vague 
memory was actually an adequate basis for an opinion.
David/Cariadoc
http://www.best.com/~ddfr/