Date: Tue, 4 May 1999 10:06:09 -0600 (MDT)
Message-Id: <199905041606.KAA16401@indra.com>
From: Pandora Berman <cent@martigny.ai.mit.edu>
To: sca-east@indra.com
Subject: EK: Patri (long)
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-Poster: Pandora Berman <cent@martigny.ai.mit.edu>

To all who may read these words, from Lady Eowyn Eilonwy of Alewife Brook.

Good gentles all, I greet you well, and wish you joy of the new year.  I
was recently digging through some old mail, and came across a discussion of
a few months back, concerning the old joke about Patri du Chat Gris having
been knighted for his dancing.  While any serious confusion regarding the
truth of this matter was swiftly settled (yes, it's a joke, Patri got
knighted for the usual sorts of things one gets knighted for, it was his
Laurel that he got for dance), and as far as I can tell nothing false was
said, still the full tale was not given.
    Now, I wasn't around quite as long ago as that -- back when dirt was in
beta release, and mud still under theoretical consideration.  Still, I
arrived not all that long after, relatively speaking, and I know many of
the actors.  So with your good will, I would give you a New Year's tale:
insofar as I recall, this is how it was told to me, of Patri's knighting.
----------

As all should know, once upon a time 34 years and a few days ago, a
quasi-medieval-themed party was held in Diana Paxson's honor and back yard,
and thus was the Society for Creative Anachronism born. (But that's another
story.)

A few months later, the participants decided they had enjoyed themselves so
well that they needed to do it again.  This time they wished to revel in a
city park, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, who was in charge of reserving same
for them, discovered that local regulations required them to be a group
with a name rather than simply Diana's strange friends; thus was the SCA
named.

Within a few years of that time, MZB moved east, to New York City.  She had
had such fun with the SCA that she felt a similar group ought to be
encouraged here on the Right Coast.  So with the assistance of some of her
New York friends, she founded the East Kingdom.  The tales I have heard
vary as to whether the East Kingdom was originally an entirely separate
entity from the SCA or not, but certainly it was intended as a (friendly)
rival to the Left Coast group, doing the same sorts of things that the
original SCA folk did -- and even if the East Kingdom did begin as an
independent group, within a few years it came under the general SCA
purview, with the Left Coast group being specialized into the West Kingdom.

In the first few years of the East Kingdom, the kingdom -was- New York and
Environs.  In fact, for a while they had a rule that to become king, one
had to live within a specified short distance -- I believe 50 miles -- of
NYC.  But word of this activity called SCA wandered about and eventually
arrived in Cambridge. Mass., where two young gentlemen -- Patri Pugliese of
Harvard and Douglas White of MIT -- heard it, and were intrigued.  They
thought it would be fun to get involved.  Then as now, the flashiest SCA
activity was armored foot combat.  Patri, with his fencing background, was
interested in trying to fight, but the rumors they had heard clearly
indicated that fighting involved real blows, so some kind of armor seemed
prudent, particularly head armor.  Der Gwhite, being an artificer of great
skill, built his friend a plausible-looking helmet of fiberglass, and
Patri, and possibly others, went to New York to try to find this tourney he
had heard tell of.

They found the tourney.  Patri talked with the warriors about joining the
battle; when they mentioned the need of a helmet to fight in, he showed
them his.  It was quite unlike any they had ever seen (those were the freon
can days), and they were unsure whether it would provide suitable
protection to the wearer.  So it was agreed to test it.  The helmet was
placed on the ground, and Lord (now Master) El Two-Knives struck it a
mighty blow with his large mace (which had a name, though I forget what).
Being fiberglass, the helm squashed instantaneously under the blow,
immediately rebounded, and went bounce...  bounce...  bounce... down the
field -- to the great amusement of those present.  I do not know whether
Patri was allowed to fight in that helmet, or whether he had to borrow
another for the day, but I believe he was allowed to fight.

Patri went back to Cambridge and told his friends about this activity
called SCA, and several of them decided it sounded like fun and they wanted
to do it too.  After a little meeting and talking, and with a modest amount
of correspondence with parts west (this is back when the SCA Registry was
run out of someone's desk drawer), the Barony of Norfolk, Suffolk, and
Middlesex was born.  A very brief time later -- with perhaps some
suggestions from the extant heralds that using the modern names of the
areas covered wasn't quite appropriate, and also some feeling from the
inhabitants that that name was a tad unwieldy, and anyway they didn't
really want to be called Norfolkians, Suffolkians, and Middlesexuals -- the
group was renamed the Barony of Carolingia.  It had to be a barony:
baronies were the smallest conceivable groups, and a relatively new concept
at that -- until a few years before, every group had been a kingdom.  So
there had to be a baron.  Patri was not the "founding baron" of Carolingia,
nor its first baron; he became its second baron several years later -- but
that's another story.

Now, Patri and his Carolingian friends were all college students in the
Boston area, many specializing in areas that could have a medieval focus
(e.g., Patri's degrees are in History of Science).  So being new and eager,
and having an intellectual bent, they were willing to spend lots of time
and energy doing interesting and inventive things in the SCA vein.  There
were enough of them here to hold activities among themselves, and New York
was several hours away.  So they didn't get down there -- to the main East
Kingdom -- all that much.  Thus was born the concept that Carolingians
don't travel (never completely true, though hard to stamp out even now
despite decades of counter-examples -- but that's another story).

The folk of the East Kingdom realized that some SCA activity was occurring
up in Massachusetts.  They figured out that Patri was by far the one with
the most SCA-fighting experience, and they knew he was trying to teach
others in this area how to do it.  Some early king decided that a fighter
shouldn't take students without being a knight, but no one in the East
Kingdom had seen enough of this Patri fellow to know whether he merited
being knighted.  (Those were also the days when any lord who won Crown
Tourney without being a knight was immediately knighted -- presumably on
the grounds that he had been able to beat all the other knights and
therefore deserved the accolade.  Those were as well the days when, as I
have heard tell, no one could be made a knight without the unanimous
consent of the order.  But these are both other stories.)  So this king, in
order to indicate that Patri had some experience and should be given some
respect, named him a Knight-Palatine.

Some of you may have heard of the Palatine Barony of Western Seas, which is
in modern terms Hawaii.  There, since they are so far away from their
mother kingdom, and travel elsewhere is so difficult, they have been
allowed the dispensation of holding contests (I think a tourney alternates
with some sort of arts competition) to choose their baron on a regular
rotation -- just as ordinary kingdoms and principalities choose their
rulers.  This practice gives many, or at least several (I know not their
population) the chance to act as sovereign lord of the barony -- which is
what "palatine" signifies: a vassal ruling a distant province, who because
of that distance from the capital is invested with royal powers within his
domain.  And something like this is what that early king of the East
intended to convey about Patri's dominance, at least with respect to
fighting, in Carolingia.

Back in those days, things were so small that Tournaments Illuminated
published chronicles of events and news of courts.  Even news from the East
Kingdom (and the other two, newer kingdoms, the Middle and Atenveldt)
sometimes appeared.  So, perhaps, it was that the authorities out west
learned that some fellow named Patri du Chat Gris had been named a
knight-palatine by the King of the East.  The western authorities (I am not
sure quite who -- my best guess is the BoD, with a second guess of the
Laurel King of Arms and/or the Earl Marshall of the Society) protested to
the East.  There was no such rank as knight-palatine, they said.  Either
this gentleman was a knight or he wasn't, and these eastern upstarts
weren't allowed to take it on themselves to come up with new, confusing
ranks.  This was at least as bad as when the King of the East had named
that fellow Vardak of Eloi a "Court Count" (but that's another, and true,
story), if not worse.  The East Kingdom had to work with the set of ranks
already arrived at; if they didn't like them they could go through channels
to try to change the system, but they couldn't simply dream up new titles
at the drop of a hat, especially when the new titles could be easily
confused with those already existing.  The East Kingdom had to somehow
regularize this fellow Patri's status: either really make him a knight, or
go back to calling him a lord.

The King of the East was now one Rakkurai of Kamakura.  I assume he
consulted his knights.  My guess is that, since Patri had been called a
knight-palatine for a while, they felt that stepping him down to plain Lord
Patri would be an insulting demotion.  On the other hand, it wouldn't be
proper to simply knight him out of hand.  They eventually decided that he
had to be tested, to determine whether he really was knight material.

So at the next suitable Carolingian event -- a spring tournament, in AS 6/7
-- all the knights of the East (or nearly so) appeared, as did the King of
the East.  All the knights of the East challenged Patri to fight.  As was
said during the discussion a few months since, Patri and his friends
initially grew more and more concerned that he had in some unknown manner
gravely insulted the East Kingdom, or the King and Queen, or something of
that nature, as the pile of gauntlets at his feet grew higher and higher.
Eventually someone attempted to discreetly figure out what was going on,
and was, I gather, told the truth -- which Patri doubtless found only
partially relieving.

So one by one, Patri took the field against all the knights of the East.
And one by one, they each declared to the King that this Lord Patri was a
courteous fellow and a skilled and chivalrous fighter, and that he should
be made a knight.  And so, after the tournament ended, it was done, in the
Borough of Felding (Wellesley College).  The next item of court business
was the declaration of the Pennsic War.
----------

And that is the story, as I recall hearing it.  I believe MZB eventually
moved on, either from NYC or from the SCA.  Der Gwhite, who was never
interested in the organizational end of things, faded back early, although
he still lives in Carolingia, and still attends events occasionally --
rather less often than once in a blue moon.
    Sir Patri, having retired from the Coronet of Carolingia, is now little
seen in these parts, having turned his energy to other endeavors.  Sir
Michael of York, whom Mistress Catrin mentioned (her lord husband and a
member of House Chat Gris, who is pleased to pretend that he was knighted
for his mead-brewing), is no longer as young or as injury-free as once he
was.  But once upon a time, when we were young and things were small, they
were very hot sticks indeed; I was there, and I remember.

I hope I have amused you some little while, and I remain

Your servant & Carolingia's,
Eowyn

done upon the ether this 5th day of the new year 34, at the Borough of
MITGaard, in Carolingia.


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