Mistress katherine kerr submits the following for the recently added category:
“Sweet are the uses of adversity“, for research in or practice of an art, craft or past-time that your persona might have undertaken whilst whiling away a siege (or plague)…
…or a long sea voyage and incarceration, being a collection of documents covering the fateful Voyage of the Baskin-Kerrs in an Alternative Timeline.
http://webcentre.co.nz/kk/RatLettersVoyage.htm
Joana de Bairros enters a delicious chicken dish in the category Do you think because you are virtuous, that there shall be no more cakes and ale?
“There is one Portuguese cookbook from period called Um tratado da cozinha portuguesa do século XV or Livro de cozinha da Infanta D. Maria de Portugal which can be found, with an English translation at http://www.medievalcookery.com/notes/tratado.html. This collection of recipes was written in the late 15th century and then taken to Italy with Maria, the grand daughter of Manuel I of Portugal, when she married Alessandro Farnese. It ended up in Naples. (See reference to this in At the First Table:Food and Social Identity in Early Modern Spain by Jodi Campbell).
I was having a friend of over for dinner so decided to cook the Moorish Chicken recipe from this book as I have tried it before and it is delicious.
Outra receita de galinha mourisca
Façam em pedaçosuma galinha bem gorda, e levem-na ao fogo brando, com duas colheres de sopa degordura, algumas fatias de toucinho, bastante coentro, um punhadinho de salsa,umas folhinhas de hortelã, sal e uma cebola bem grande. Abafem-na e deixem-na dourar, mexendo-a devez em quando. Em seguida cubram essagalinha com água, e assim que levante fervura acabem de temperá-la com sal,vinagre, cravo-da-índia, açafrão, pimenta-do-reino e gengibre. Logo que agalinha esteja cozida, derramem dentro 4 gemas batidas. Tomem uma travessa funda, forrada com fatiasde pão e derramem por cima a galinha.
Another recipe for moorish chicken – literal translation
Cut a very fat chicken into pieces, and cook it over low heat, with two soup spoons of fat, a few slices of bacon, lots of cilantro, a bit of parsley, a few mint leaves, salt and a very large onion. Cover it (abafar means smother) and let it brown, stirring once in a while. Next cover that chicken in water, and as soon as it reaches a boil finish seasoning it with salt, vinegar, cloves, saffron, black pepper and ginger. When the chicken is cooked, add 4 beaten egg yolks. Take a deep serving tray, lined with bread slices and put the chicken over top.
My redaction to feed 4
500gm chicken breast
1T olive oil
100gm bacon
¼ cup of coriander
2T parsley
1T mint
Pinch of salt
2 cups of chicken stock
1T white wine vinegar
1 t salt
1t each of cloves, pepper and ginger
A pinch of saffron
4 egg yolks
1 loaf of bread.
Lady Eyja submits the first entry in the new ‘Sweet are the uses of adversity‘ category. She writes the following to describe her fingerless gloves:
“I decided to use my ‘plague time’ to learn the Nalebinding Oslo stitch. This may have been a skill my persona learnt around the fire as a young girl, and taken up again when time rich but resource poor as it only requires wool.
I have used a bone needle, 100% wool, and a youtube video – https://youtu.be/UEJywXIluhk
Initially I found it tricky to get a nice tension without tearing the wool, but it was relatively easygoing once that was sorted. The fingerless gloves were made in the round, not following any specific pattern other than trying it on as I went.
The result is soft, warm, and stretchy with a neat pattern. The wool itself felts well at the joints but is rather fragile, so in future I would use something sturdier for a hard wearing piece such as mittens.
In service,
Eyja Gunnarsdottir.”
The Honorable Lady Joana de Bairros submits an article published in From the Tower in the category “When I am forgotten, as I shall be, and sleep in dull cold marble, … Say, I taught thee.”
This article can also be found on her blog: https://joanadebairros.blogspot.com/
“Creating and Registering an SCA Name
THL Elisabetta Foscari/Joana de Bairros (Tour d’Or Herald)
As you can see from the length of the name above I have recently made some changes. I decided I wanted to create an alternate 16th century Portuguese persona and then use the Persona Gubbins challenge to develop this. I first, however, needed a Portuguese name to attach to my Portuguese work. I felt that writing this article, showing my progression from thinking about a name to formally registering it with the College of Heralds, would be useful for those who are also considering their Society name.
But why Portuguese?
The first step in the creation of an SCA persona is deciding on time and place. For those of you who have known me as a serious Italophile for the past 19 years, you may be wondering what brought this Portuguese fever on? For me this is using the SCA to explore my mundane heritage as my great-great grandfather was from Portugal. Unfortunately he was very keen to Anglicise himself when he moved to New Zealand so we have very little information about him except that he changed his surname to
Thomas and came from the Azores. Your own heritage may be a factor that plays a part in your choice of culture, as may personal interest, which was why I originally chose Italy.
There are a broad range of time periods you can explore in the SCA, up to around 1600. Taking account of your areas of interest may help narrow the field. For me, the 16th century was an easy decision as there are pretty clothes, buf for you, an interest in martial pursuits or a particular type of cuisine may shape your decision as to time. Often people want a name that works across a broad period of time, which is entirely possible, but as you will see below that it is easier to get your registration paperwork done if you focus on a particular century.
Looking for a name
My go to place for name research is the Academy of St Gabriel who have a superb medieval names database organised by culture. This is where making a decision as to culture and time becomes useful. The database links to a wide variety of SCA articles where people have analysed primary source material to find name construction and usual names. I find this is a good place to start looking for a name. I even used it when looking for baby names! Another good resource is the SCA Heraldry name page which is again divided by culture.
If, however, you are looking for something more specific then there are a number of books that will help you. A good place to look for these is the College of Heralds list of books that do not require photocopied evidence for name registration found here. If you want to go back to basics then look for primary sources that include lists of names. These could be tax rolls, census data, funerary monuments, parliamentary records, court documents, parish registers or customs logs, to provide a few examples. Often the articles from St Gabriel are a compilation of evidence from these primary sources which is very helpful to those who do not have the time or access to do so themselves.
Resources for my name
I was lucky when choosing my name that there were two 16th century Portuguese name articles. One was ‘Portuguese Names from the 16th century’ by Juliana de Luna which used letters from the Court of the Portuguese King John (Joao) III. There were few female names listed in this source however, although it did make some interesting points about name construction in that there was no mention of middle names and only 15% had two parts to the surname.
The other article ‘Portuguese Names from Lisbon, 1565’ by Aryanhwy merch Catmael was the most useful article as it had an extensive list of female given names and surnames to choose from. This article is based on a 16th century tax roll. Although I am planning to focus on 1530s Portugal rather than 1560s this is as close as I can get and names that were used in 1565 would have been around in 1535.
Name structure
It is important to consider name construction when creating your name. Some cultures put surnames first, other cultures expect patronymics to be used and others use feminine or masculine word endings for names. The evidence on Portuguese names in both sources was that ‘overwhelmingly’ people had a given name and a surname. There were some examples of two part surnames but these were rare. There appear to be no recorded two part given names. I wanted to keep my name simple so I chose to go with what appears to be the standard practice of a given and a surname.
Given name
When choosing an SCA first name I think it is important to pick a name you feel is you and you are actually going to answer to. When I chose Elisabetta it was because Elizabeth is my middle name and that was an Italian version of it. It is also an idea to run it past a friend and get their opinion on it. Try it out for a while to see if it works for you by saying it and writing it down. Other important considerations are who else in the group has that name or a version of it.
The Lisbon article had a long list of female names to consider. The most popular were Isabel and Maria of which there were 139 examples of each. As I spend a large amount of time with Mistress Isabel Maria I felt that neither of these were suitable choices. Caterina was the next most popular and there are many of those in the Crescent Isles. Inez I liked but it is the Portuguese version of Agnes and I didn’t think it would be a good idea considering how much time I spend with Baroness Agnes. I emailed my short list of names to Baroness Agnes and she commented that Madalena was a bit quieter than me!
In the end I kept going back to Joana so I knew it was the right one. It has a nice correlation in sound to my mundane name of Josie so it should make it easy to recognise. Joana was the thirteenth most popular name on the tax roll with 36 instances of it.
Surname
The information from the tax roll suggests that there were three types of surnames in Lisbon in 1565. One was a patronymic (English examples of these are Robinson, Thompson) which in Portuguese are names like Diaz, Guomez, Mendez. The second is locative (a place name) such as Braga, Estremoz or Lamego which are all towns in Portugal. Many of these are preceded by a de or d’vowel. This indicates that a person is from a place i.e. de Braga is from Braga. The third type are descriptors such as Moreno which is dark skinned, Pinto which is freckled or Veloso which is wooly or shaggy.
As I was unsure what my original Portuguese family surname was, I decided to look for a name that worked with the Joana. I jokingly said to Agnes some time ago that I could document a Portguese name that loosely translated to Joanna Lopez from the Block which was Joanna Lopes de Bairros. The more I thought about this, the more I liked the sound of the de Bairros part . A bairro is a Portuguese word that means neighbourhood or quarter. There is also a town called Bairros between Oporto and Lamego in Portugal. There were 6 instances of varying spellings of de Bairros on the
tax roll, 3 of these were spelt de Bairros.
Most of all I liked the meaning behind de Bairros in terms of developing my persona. When I picked my Italian name I chose Foscari as they are all well known aristocratic Venetian family with one famous 15th century doge, Francesco Foscari, as a member. I wanted to link my Joana persona to my love of being in the kitchen. Elisabetta Foscari would be far too aristocratic to be working in a kitchen but Joana de Bairros certainly would not be. I imagine Joana to be a bit like J.Lo in the Jenny from the Block song, working her way up from a family of fairly humble origins to become the Honourable Lady Joana.
Joana de Bairros it is!
Registering a name
I found deciding on a name more difficult than the registration of it. If you are new to the SCA or would like some reassurance this would be the time I would suggest talking to a herald about how to get your name registered. All registrations do need to go through the Southron Gaard herald so you will need to talk to them about what you want at some point in the process.
The first step towards registration is to see if your name is available as you will not be allowed to register a name that is either too similar to someone else in the Society or of a famous person in period. The place to look at this is the SCA Armorial search engine. You are better to use the Name Pattern Search as this is less sensitive than the Name Search form so will give a better coverage of entries. Luckily there is only one other Joana, a Joana Alvarez registered in 2012 in Gleann Abhann. There are no de Bairros registered so hopefully I am safe.
Your herald will then need to fill in the Name Submission form which can be found in electronic copy on the Lochac herald page. This does need to include evidence of your name. If you are using certain sources you can just mention them by name or provide a page number in a book (see the list above). Name registration services are free in Lochac!
Final Thoughts
There is a sense of achievement in getting your name passed by the College of Heralds and it does make it feel much more like it is yours. Personally I most enjoyed finding a name that I am confident was appropriate to the place and period in time I wanted to be in. Name registration does not have to be frightening if you are prepared to shop around for what feels right for you and it can even be fun.”
Useful links
https://www.s-gabriel.org/
https://www.s-gabriel.org/names/index.shtml
https://heraldry.sca.org/names.html
https://heraldry.sca.org/admin.html#APPENDIXH
http://oanda.sca.org/
Lady Eyja Gunnarsdottir shares her striking entry for the category: 12. A garish flag, to be the aim of every dangerous shot. An item of heraldic display.
“This is the first item of personal heraldry I have created, using yellow, blue, and red cotton to ensure a ‘garish’ colour. ‘Gyronny Or and azure, in pale three keys fesswise gules’.
Once we are out of plague isolation I will affix it to a dowel and cord for display.”
“What fates impose, that men must needs abide”
3 Henry VI, 4.3.60
In light of recent events, and with the gracious support of Their Excellencies Grim and Alexandra, Baron and Baroness Southron Gaard, to assist you to occupy your time while you are retired to your estates, the timeframe for entering the Persona Gubbins Challenge has been extended until Yule (Mid Winter).
Additionally, a new category has been devised to delight and intrigue:
16. Sweet are the uses of adversity
You are invited to research or practice an art, craft or past time that your persona might have undertaken whilst whiling away a siege (or plague). (Please note that we cannot support the mis-use of live chickens as a plague cure (probable true story)).
The Persona Gubbins Challenge is designed to celebrate our personas. Swathes of documentation are not required to participate. Discover, create and share the small items that enhance your SCA experience.
In service and appreciation of Shakespeare,
Meisterin Christian Baier, Baronessa Isabel Maria del Aguila, Lady Amabillia Thexton
The Honorable Lady Elisabetta Foscari details her recent intimate Italian dinner for friends in her entry in the category Do you think because you are virtuous, that there shall be no more cakes and ale? In her words:
“I chose to cook a dinner party for some friends using recipes from Scappi. Below are the pdfs of my write up of the meal.
Introduction and Course one: cena1
Course 2: cena2
Course 3 and Reference list: cena3“
Solvi shares a hand woven front dress that her persona may have worn in the category “with silken coats, and caps, and golden rings, with ruffs, and cuffs, and farthingales, and things.”
Materials and techniques:
Using a rigid heddle loom and some wool given to me I wove a front panel of a dress.
The rest of the dress is fabric that was also given to me. My challenge to myself was to make a wearable garment with that fabric and since the fabric wasn’t enough I decided to have a go at weaving a front panel.
Persona Inspiration:
My persona is from the early Viking age.
Solvi enjoys weaving and exploring possible fashion looks and enjoys wearing her creations. She is a creative type and often wears out of the ordinary viking fashion making the locals talk – “Well that isn’t traditional” and “That’s different”
Solvi has two pairs of shoes to enter in the category “with silken coats, and caps, and golden rings, with ruffs, and cuffs, and farthingales, and things.” In her own words:
“Iron age shoes – for summer
Viking shoes – for winter
Materials and techniques (how was the item made and what materials were used):
My iron age shoes and Viking shoes were made using
Based on the pictures I have seen on pinterest while doing a quick search for viking/middle age shoes. These shoes are based on those looks.
Because of my high arch I also made myself some arch supports with leather and leather leftovers. Custom made is so awesome.
I added the rope soles as the leather was a bit slippery on a lot of surfaces and the last thing I wanted was to end up on my bottom at events. 😉 and the rope soles add grip as well as helps the shoes last a little longer. Sisal rope is hard wearing. That technique of adding rope soles is used in the 13th century. Its origins can be traced to the Occitania and Catalonia areas of the Pyrenees on the Spanish and French border. Ref: https://startupfashion.com/fashion-archives-a-look-at-the-history-of-espadrilles/ As most things ended up on the silk road I thought that these type of “technologies” would have been combined sooner or later, in true viking form…. Not necessarily documented in texts and in visual arts which we often refer to.
I have tested both these pairs of shoes on most surfaces…. Tarseal, shingle, gravel, wood walkways, carpet, lino and grass. All but lino are great and safe to walk on – Lino is still slippery but I could add some silicone to the bottom if I am too worried about it.
Persona Inspiration (when and where is the persona from, and how might they have
used / experienced this item):
My persona is from the early Viking age.
Solvi’s husband is a merchant on the Silk Road, is away for many months, and often brings home goods for the love of his life. Sometimes in the form of leather, fabrics and other useful items. Solvi needs shoes for both summer and winter to keep her feet protected from the elements. So she made these shoes for her own comfort to wear. Solvi likes combining different techniques to improve comfort, safety and practicality…. Sometimes looks…. May be one day those plain winter shoes could be altered with a pretty design on the top, when she figures out how, and when she has the time.”
Solvi enters two ancient games she has made in the category of “What revels are in hand? Is there no play, To ease the anguish of a torturing hour?” Solvi has this to say of her creations:
“Project
Royal Game of Ur and Hnefatafl
Both Games from ancient times. Largely found on the silk road and in viking homes.
Materials and techniques: (how was the item made and what materials were used):
Royal Game of Ur:
After watching a video on youtube by the British Museum I was intrigued by the game named above. I searched for a copy to buy but unfortunately everywhere was sold out. So after i was given some wood (MDF) i had decided to give wood working a go and make one.
My version of the Royal Game of Ur is made by hand, sawn and carved and coloured (with inks) the game pieces are wood circles that I found in the cheaps shops ($2 type ones – laser cut circles) and the dice were ones bought and I altered the according to the dice that were used on the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHjznvH54Cw As often as I do I did add some runes for my viking persona… a personal touch.
Hnefatafl:
Being more curious and loving board games I searched up more medieval games and came across a viking game. I saw it played on a program “vikings” (on netflix) looked it up and it was an actual game! So excited I started planning on how I was going to make it. I was given some leather so went ahead and made a board that converted into a pouch to hold all the pieces.
The Board itself is a leather round piece drawn together with a wooden toggle (wooden button) and waxed cording. The pieces once again were glued together laser cut circles from the shop. The board was drawn on with permanent ink pens.
Both games were recently played during a down time at Golden Flight 2019 by various people.
Persona Inspiration:
My persona is from the early Viking age.
Solvi’s husband is a merchant on the Silk road, is away for many months and often brings home goods for the love of his life. Solvi when not weaving or sewing goods to sell or give to the local populace, enjoys a good board game with close friends in the evenings.”
