"One of the years was the year that Evening Magazine came and filmed out on Chapel Green. That was kind of neat...
"Kate Morgan was working in a cheese shop at the time, so the prizes were a pound of cheese, a half pound of cheese, and so on. The winner of the tournament was announced as Fernando Salazar y Perez, and he got a cheddar cheese. He said, 'My Lady, I have traveled to fight in tournaments way to the South, way to the West, a little bit to the North, and not very far to the East. I have fought in many tournaments and won many prizes, but never a prize like this!'
"So then, when a few months later this was shown on television, we stopped dance practice and turned on the television. This was not a very great spot for us. When the part with Fernando came up, he said, 'My boss is watching this. All of Boston is watching this!'"
Fernando's well-known for his prowess.
He wins all the tourneys with ease.
He's won jewels and weapons and helmets
And three pounds of very good cheese!
"Evening Magazine filmed a segment on the SCA at a tourney that we had one year. It was a cloudy-rainy-foggy kind of day, and the tourney was very small. There were cameramen and wires everywhere, it seemed. It was edited in such a way that, in between shots of the SCA doing good SCA things, what you tended to have was a segment of the announcer himself making cutesy comments, so the overall effect was sort of depressing."
"Oh yes, I remember the Quest. The Borough of Felding and House Silverwing had cooperated in doing a joint Quest. It was very ambitiously set up and had a couple of staging flaws. There was an outer circle, with several problems to solve. With each problem you solved you got an extra ribbon, and when you had all the ribbons you could make it into the inner circle. As designed, you almost certainly, unless you had done unbelievably well and been unbelievably lucky in the first half, would make it in only so far in the second half and then have to go back out to do more stuff on the outside. Each time you made it back in you might get a little further and then get bounced back out again. That was the theory. The problem was that the newest and most inexperienced Feldings were running the inner circle and were intimidated by all these people who'd made it so far. Though the point of this station was to turn people back, it's hard to argue with someone like Fernando who says, 'No, look, you see we have done all these steps - we get to go on!' and they'd go on. So it didn't actually work quite as planned.
"At this event, King Vissevald got tired of people shouting, 'vivat! vivat! vivat!' after each award, so in order to stop taking up time with shouting, he interrupted court and said, 'It is the King's whim that from now on we are not going to shout "vivat!" We will now shout "great white hole!"' This was a reference to a MAD magazine article [in which military commanders were using silly code names; the 'great white hole' was China]. What happened is that the Carolingians started shouting 'great white hole! great white hole! great white hole!' That lasted for about two awards.
"Vis called the herald over to him, whispered, and said, 'Okay, from now on it is the King's whim that where you would shout "great white hole!" and not "vivat!", you will now shout, "The beggar in the marketplace cannot hear the mockingbird in the trees!"' This was intended to give us something to shout that we could not shout all together. Well, being good Carolingians, we in fact were able to cheer this in chorus. The really fun part was, when a few years later Vis was crowned again, the Carolingians were all ready... He nearly refused to approve the charter. Incidentally, 'The beggar in the marketplace cannot hear the mockingbird in the trees' is Vissevald's poor memory of a line in the movie Casino Royale. [Two characters are trading proverbs, and one says,] 'Beggar who sit in marketplace is deaf to song of mockingbird in the trees outside of city wall.'"
Provost: Kathryn Morgan