Sparks fly as the fires burn at midnight
May. 1st, 2009 09:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
olorielNormally Jörg and I shun all those Dance-into-Mayday/ Walpurgis Night/ Beltane (because Walpurgis apparently isn't hip enough for modern German pagans, we need to steal the British name!) events because they are rarely nice traditional dancing things but rather just another excuse to get violently drunk and, after that, drunkenly violent. Technically it's a lovely tradition - just like Easter bonfires or Solstice or even Carnival - but in their modern form they're no fun unless your idea of fun is getting drunk, vomiting into a ditch and, after midnight, stumbling and falling into said ditch altogether.
(Yes, I realise I am probably walking into the Romantic trap here, and back in the Good Old Days they got just as desperately drunk (if they could afford it) and just as violent (but at least they got a flogging for it) and pissed in the bushes, too.)
Anyway, we normally avoid these events.
Now good friends of ours got tickets for the Walpurgis Fair at Satzvey castle and asked whether we'd like to come along, seeing how it was my birthday eve and I liked medievalish stuff and all that. So we said yes. As the tickets are relatively expensive, we could hope that the kind of people who use such events for getting drunk and making trouble will be at other events, like those of the auxiliary fire brigades (don't ask me).
Of course we dressed up for the occasion. Even though I still haven't managed to make proper garb for the husband (Gondorian ranger, because I CAN. Or think I can, at any rate) and he had to make do with the good old pants-shirt-tunic combo again.
But on the way home from work it suddenly hit me:
I'm a married woman now.
Not that these occasions have anything to do with, you know, authenticity or anything of the sort. But still. I'm a married woman. I cannot go bareheaded unless I'm being an elf anyway (I'll know, if nobody else does.)
So I needed a last-minute bonnet, or at least a veil. I never made one before and I look dreadful with any kind of headdress, but that's not going to stop us, is it?
I went for the easiest and fastest way and made a very simple veil without looking for any authentic designs. On minus side, I keep thinking it looks vaguely Egyptian or Arabic (or cliché Arabic, at any rate - like something you'd catch the Three Kings from your nativity scene wearing). On plus side, it took less than two hours, it cost me nothing as I used leftovers from the Éowyn shieldmaiden dress I made years ago (the dress turned out shite, but the fabric is awesome) and the border I used on the blue dress anyway, and it basically has the same flow as normal hair so it goes ok with my headdress-incompatible head. So yeah. Works well enough for me.
The event as such was nice albeit too expensive for what you got. Schelmish used to be better IMHO, some of the market stalls had good stuff but most were unexciting, but the bonfire was very lovely. Regina and Patrick had managed to smuggle a chocolate cake and some sparkling vine onto the castle premises so we could have a toast and a slice of cake when it was midnight, and of course I couldn't stop them from singing. I fell asleep on the way back home (sleep deprivation + mead + sparkling wine = goodnight Lyra) but managed to get up reasonably early today so I could prepare the presentation handout and mail it to the professor (he wants to see the handout by Friday noon preceding the presentation week so he can offer feedback) and accept the phone calls by various relatives, all gone for the weekend except for my dad who dropped by on the way to my grandfather's celebration. Feel, strangely enough, not at all sad about not having had a celebration of my own. Feel kind of bad about not feeling bad. *rolls eyes*
Last-minute headdress. 'náro approves.
The husband should wear headdress too, but he refused. Bareheaded peasant!
- - -
EDIT: And what a birthday gift! Darth Fingon provides a list of words you would've thought Tolkien wouldn't have invented Elvish translations for because you, like everyone else, keep confusing "Catholicism" with "Puritanism" - but in fact he did. Some of them I stumbled across myself while working on the Tengwar karuta, but some are new even to me. Am not at all surprised about Elvish words for sexual organs. Am, however, surprised about "lawyer"... and "hermaphrodite">. Am inordinately amused that apparently the Quenya (Elf-Latin, for you non-Tolkienists) word for the female breast is... titte.
Which happens to be a rather derogatory term for the same thing in modern German slang. Pseudo-proto-indo-european enjoying a private joke, eh?
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Date: 2009-05-01 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-01 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-01 09:19 pm (UTC)Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum Geburtstag. Ich wäre auch nicht traurig über keine eigenes Geburtstagsfest gewesen. Die Fotos (besonders vom Feuer) sehen echt beeindruckend aus und du konntest alles genießen ohne dich selber in die Arbeit stürzen zu müssen. ;-)
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Date: 2009-05-01 09:34 pm (UTC)Fotos sehen toll aus.
Und alles Gute natürlich! :D
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Date: 2009-05-01 09:50 pm (UTC)Ich bin total grun das ihr haben einen echte schlöss fur mit-spiel. Mine grüpe wurde korper-stuck geben fur eine echte schlöss!
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Date: 2009-05-01 09:53 pm (UTC)Well, that's clearly an advantage we have in Europe ;)
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Date: 2009-05-01 10:03 pm (UTC)There's a company here in the States that builds castles -- Castle Magic (http://www.castlemagic.com) It's one of my lottery pipe dreams to buy one, and let my medievalist club use it for events.
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Date: 2009-05-01 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-01 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-01 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 12:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-02 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-02 12:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 12:32 pm (UTC)(Und danke für das Lob der Kopfbedeckung!)
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Date: 2009-05-02 11:14 am (UTC)Wir wären beinah nach Satzvey gefahren, die 20 Euro haben uns dann aber abgehalten, die haben echt nen schaden *kopfschüttel* Dafür hatten wir unser eigenes kleines Feuer am Rhein :)
*hugs*
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Date: 2009-05-05 12:33 pm (UTC)Ja, allerdings. Wir mussten "nur" 18 € zahlen, weil Regina und Patrick die Karten vorbestellt hatten, aber auch das war schwer übertrieben. Naja, man muss ja alles mal ausprobiert haben ;)
Happy Birthday!
Date: 2009-05-02 03:03 pm (UTC)I love the pictures, wonderful, including last-minute headgear. XD
And *SNORT* about Tolkien. Always good for a surprise...
Re: Happy Birthday!
Date: 2009-05-05 12:34 pm (UTC):D
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Date: 2009-05-03 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 12:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-05-05 09:39 am (UTC)And I love your married-woman-veil. XD
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Date: 2009-05-05 12:34 pm (UTC)Thank you!