December, 2004 - Nr. 12
One night, in the year 1004…
Last month I decided it was high time for my large, busy
family (the musical group, "The Forget-me-nots and their families") to have
some silly stress-free fun---just like the old days, when I was small. And
since one of the guys in my family, Samuel, and a very good friend of ours
(a fun-loving one), Christian Scarlato, needed a proper birthday party,
there was only one thing to do: Throw a Medieval Banquet!! So that’s what I
and a few other ladies did. We formed the "Banquet Planning Crew" and got
right to work!
We set our banquet date for November 7th, giving us one month’s time to prepare. So much needed to be done! My mother and I poured over books to better educate ourselves on the era. We planned an authentic menu, we went on missions to find wooden bowls and silver goblets at second-hand stores; we brainstormed and delegated and created. To ensure that my busy relatives would have a great time, I decided to put together a costume for as many of them as I could manage. It’s actually not hard to throw together a great medieval outfit out of drapes and odd things one can find around the house (and in the aisles of Value Village)! During our final week, we made nametags, humorous menu cards with Arthurian art on them and "You are invited to a Medieval Banquet" flyers. I put them up all around the big house that we, my musical family of 24, all share. We emptied our living room, set up three tables in a "U" shape, and hung carpets, (oops, I mean tapestries), a golden coat-of-arms and the hide of a furry beast on the walls. A few of the guys dragged in the golden, bejewelled throne we happened to have stored in the barn. The Great Hall was complete! After tons of rewarding work and a string of very late nights, we were finally ready!
![...and the birthday feast [photo: Rachel Seilern]](412c-Rachel_0267.jpg)
Sunday, the 7th, arrived. It was late afternoon
and a fire crackled in the stone fireplace, setting a warm glow on our
banquet hall. Our majestic guests arrived from their distant chambers (and a
few came from distant kingdoms) ----floating on clouds of theatrical pride.
King Arthur, "Francelot du Lac", the Lady of Shallot (with a fantastic
lampshade headpiece), Braveheart, Hagen Tronje and even Aragorn, all the way
from Middle Earth, were among the celebrity guests.
![The medieval banquet [photo: Rachel Seilern]](412c-Rachel_0256.jpg)
Soon,
all were seated and enjoying appetizers of "mutton butter on St. Peter’s
Ancient Rye", (as was written on the menu). Ophelia, our life-sized doll,
sat next to the fireplace with her foam fingers tangled in the strings of a
harp. She serenaded us with wonderful medieval
![Ladies with big hats [photo: Rachel Seilern]](412c-Rachel_0291.jpg)
background
music (assisted by a CD machine set up behind her.) Our primary cook, Lorie,
(dressed in luscious peach), presented our feast, platter by platter. We
experienced real opulence with "swan", "wild forest boar", "peacock", and
"messenger pigeon legs"! (These were merely turkey, chicken and ham with
fine new names.) What a delicious feast! We had savoury hunks of roasted
vegetables, and dried fruit and wine and "foot-pressed juices of various
kinds" in leaking goblets. Since we were all of noble blood, the
extravagance even went as far as including a
large wooden spoon for every two people! We served each other and
laughed and made toasts and sincere, nonsensical speeches.
!["Francelot" [photo: Rachel Seilern]](412c-Rachel_0252.jpg)
"Sir
Francelot", in a chain-mail-like, glittering silver dress and silver
salad-bowl-helmet, performed his bold and pompous hit, "C’est moi" to
entertain the company and I lip-synched to "Where are the Simple Joys of
Maidenhood" from the musical "Camelot". We partook in Lady Marion’s
scrumptious pumpkin pie and a colossal castle cake, complements of Lady
Hermaine. The festivities culminated as Christian’s
![Kings and castle [photo: Rachel Seilern]](412c-Rachel_0289.jpg)
30
years of life were honoured with a 30 catapult salute. (That was Braveheart,
in the kitchen, whacking a wooden spoon against the metal fan hood over the
stove!) What chivalry! What glory! What a night!!!
This year’s first snow fall came that night. And alas…as if taken by the November breeze, the Ladies, the Lords, Sirs, Kings, the Viking and the glittering Knight, who had floated in out of a story book, drifted away again, back into the past.
It was like a dream…
Rachel A.I. Seilern
Comments to: rachel@echoworld.com
