This started out as a project to alleviate my own poor aching arms, and I had worked on both the scroll texts and the ceremonies. I knew that I wanted to rearrange the way the Peerage ceremonies were laid out, because in the Book of Ceremonies, they have the vigils all together, and the elevations all together. There's some sense in that, but I knew that sometimes, SOMETIMES, the Crown decides that the Peerage Train is coming into the station, and it's all going to happen right now.
So instead of grouping the vigils together and the elevations together, I decided to put the vigil script immediately before the corresponding elevation script. That way we could just read right through if needed, without the dreaded page flipping.
Now it was time to gather the oaths. We all know the order:
- Great Officers
- Royal Peers
- Territorial Baronies
- Chivalry
- Laurels
- Pelicans
- Masters of Defence
- Populace
But there are other oaths! We have oaths of Loyalty for the Champions, the Lesser Officers, the Red Company, etc, and I went out and gathered them all up, so that I would be prepared in court, just in case. Naturally, since they usually happen near the beginning of court, I wanted them near the beginning of the book.
I put them in, and then started to work on the dais layout page. We had in our protocol handbook at the time a graphic that I found terribly confusing. It was laid out in a way that didn't make any sense to me. So I set about trying to make sense of it, and in the end, I had to make myself a little picture. Heralds might be notably literate in the Medieval period, but we ARE KNOWN for our love of imagery....
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| As long as I don't hear any MST3K from the audience, we're good. |
I posted my larger graphic in the Facebook group devoted to SCA Heraldry, (complete with misspelling!), and people really seemed to like it. It provoked some good conversation of Inter-Kingdom Anthropology (IKA). And a lot of "I didn't know that's how it was laid out!"
...and THIS made me wonder if other people in the Midrealm probably wanted something like this manual, too.
As I thought about all the things that I wanted written down, I also thought about the things that I know, as an experienced herald, but that many OTHER heralds do not.
- How to do a pre-court meeting
- What to ask someone who is being elevated?
- What to say when heralding a tourney?
- Who toasts first at feast?
And many more questions...
I admitted that I was making myself a little Voice Herald's Companion, and via private message I got a handful of "could I have one, too, when you're done?"
Suddenly, my little book got a little more complicated, and it looked like it wasn't going to be just for me anymore!
(to be continued...)
