Posted on 05/06/2010 4:11:48 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
For those of you who enjoy them. Interesting articles, history, details of fairs & festivals, etc...
;-)
It’s probably just me, but I can’t stand Renaissance festivals.
Yet increasingly there are scores of pirates from the 17th & 18th centuries, not exactly the Renaissance, either.
"Renaissance Fairies"?
I sometimes think it’s where you go when you’re too old to be a Deadhead or go to a Phish concert.
Dost thou playeth “Freebird?”
Morgana the Kissing Bandit is on call.
Those who belong to guilds, operate booths, or attend the festivals dressed up in Renaissance-era outfits are called Rennies. Fair patrons who come in 21st. century dress are called Mundanes.
The Earl of Elmore County on his noble steed.......
Phyllis Patterson, who started the Renaissance fairs in 1963, tried for years to maintain these events as re-enactments of sixteenth-century English rural fairs and to keep them free of anachronisms. However, such events today usually feature anachronisms such as jousting contests (which most likely died out by the time of the Renaissance) to burritos.
The pirates started showing up at Renaissance fairs in the 1990's, and now they are increasingly staging their own fairs as well.
We went to one last summer. A mix of people from old and young hippies, to conservative Christian homeschoolers with a period costume making hobby. I liked the fair. It includes people who enjoy playing, in a way reasonably ok for grown-ups. The wood-workers, swordsmen, etc. were interesting. Especially the falconry lady, who had live birds of prey.
I also liked the music.
Not liked: the new age and wicca influences, and the young people who were flaunting their cleavage (ok, a little envy there.)
I don't like that, either. The Renaissance/Reformation period is known for its scientific advances and contending schools of Christian thought, not occultism.
Jousting persisted into the 1600s- and there is some evidence it was done in the 1700s (look up the Mischianza in the American Revolution.) A few historical anachronisms won’t hurt anything- the people wearing elf ears, on the other hand....
Some Americans managed to crash that party.
LOVE it!
Thank you!
That is why my eyes saw too.
I starting thinking about the works of Adolphe-Willaim Bouguereau. He had some cool fairy painting, and some beautiful religious painting.
My favorite being Song of Angels
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