Yesterday's event
Sep. 10th, 2006 08:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
klwilliamsYesterday was the 25th annual Bard of the Mists competition and feast. This is a competition/job interview (songs, poems, stories) for the person who will be the principality Bard and head of the College of Bards for the next year, and is considered to be one of, if not the, single toughest arts competition in our kingdom.
As of Friday, only one person had announced that he would compete (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
learnteach). This could be considered something of a problem, since in the last few years the number of competitors had been very small, and this year there had been some talk about getting rid of (or at least moving) this event in favor of adding yet another fighting event. Also, learnteach had been Bard before, and we Bards (I was Bard about ten years ago) had a tradition that once we'd won we wouldn't compete for real anymore, so that new people could have an opportunity. This year, though, there was a concensus that previous Bards could and should enter this year.
I had no intention of entering. I was going to be a judge, since previous Bards were the judges of the event. In fact, I was going to go have tea with some friends before the event, so I hurried out of my house that morning with my book of poems I had written, my composition notebook (where I noticed that I had stuck a printout of "Beowulfric"), and the one costume I owned that still fit me -- the houppelande I wore over my armor.
One thing I had been discussing with some Laurel friends of mine at Purgatorio was that they as a group needed to become more visible. At tea, I remembered a story I had told before, from the Tain, that was essentially two groups of people bragging about themselves and dissing the others in order to be allowed to have the first slice of the giant roast pig being served for dinner. Hmm, I thought. If I just changed all those Irish names I couldn't pronounce I could tell the exact same story only using Knights and Laurels. And I had brought "Beowulfric", so I had a masterpiece. So, I decided to enter.
There are five rounds -- a period piece, a piece in a period style, Bard's choice, masterwork, and pick-three-random-words-out-of-a-hat-and-write-a-piece-in-fifteen-minutes -- and I did my story from the Tain, a bawdy piece that skirted the line about being strictly period (though I didn't care, since I had only entered to tell the story), a sonnet/haiku for Bard's choice (the Prince announced he liked haiku, so I did a haiku form of the sonnet just for him), "Beowulfric", and a song I made up about one of the Viscounts present.
The story went over very well. As each of the Knights said why he should go first, a Laurel would counter with a better reason why she should go first. The first one had cooked the meal, the second made the scrolls that documented the reigns, the third made the clothes that the Knights wore when they weren't in armor. I won't give away the ending. :-) The audience seemed to like it, and laughed in the right places.
I performed an updated "Beowulfric" in its entirety for the first time. The year I won my three words piece was a fast "Beowulfric" that pretty much just gave the flavor of the idea -- that one of our group, a well-known baker named Wulfric (renamed for the story) had killed Grendel with his strong hands. This also went over well, though the three people present who got their heads bitten off by Grendel were a little surprised. :-) I wasn't sure how a long piece in the verse style of the original would play to a large audience, but it seemed to work.
The trick to doing well with the three words piece is to have a very good idea of what you're going to do in advance. When I did "Beowulfric" originally I knew setting out that I would do my piece in Anglo-Saxon verse a la "Beowulf". This time I decided I would sing a song about one of the knights present, and wrote the chorus (such as it was) in advance. I had never sung in public before, but I kept the song's range well within what I could do, and it seemed to go over well.
There were six competitors, all of whom were very good. The woman who wrote "Fair Mistlands" (the anthem of the principality) competed, singing that as her masterwork. She got a standing ovation (started by me). I expected thatfalzalot would win, since she had excellent pieces, a good singing voice, and had never won before.
This being the 25th anniversary of the event, the current Bard had invited all the past Bards to attend, of which seventeen did. We previous Bards (members of the Order of the Golden Branch) stood in a line, and passed the winner's token from hand to hand from earliest winner on down to the current Bard, who announced the winner.
Which was me.
I was completely floored.
I'm also now the answer to the trivia question, Who is the first member of the Order of the Golden Branch to win the Bard of the Mists competition? :-)
As of Friday, only one person had announced that he would compete (
learnteach). This could be considered something of a problem, since in the last few years the number of competitors had been very small, and this year there had been some talk about getting rid of (or at least moving) this event in favor of adding yet another fighting event. Also, learnteach had been Bard before, and we Bards (I was Bard about ten years ago) had a tradition that once we'd won we wouldn't compete for real anymore, so that new people could have an opportunity. This year, though, there was a concensus that previous Bards could and should enter this year.I had no intention of entering. I was going to be a judge, since previous Bards were the judges of the event. In fact, I was going to go have tea with some friends before the event, so I hurried out of my house that morning with my book of poems I had written, my composition notebook (where I noticed that I had stuck a printout of "Beowulfric"), and the one costume I owned that still fit me -- the houppelande I wore over my armor.
One thing I had been discussing with some Laurel friends of mine at Purgatorio was that they as a group needed to become more visible. At tea, I remembered a story I had told before, from the Tain, that was essentially two groups of people bragging about themselves and dissing the others in order to be allowed to have the first slice of the giant roast pig being served for dinner. Hmm, I thought. If I just changed all those Irish names I couldn't pronounce I could tell the exact same story only using Knights and Laurels. And I had brought "Beowulfric", so I had a masterpiece. So, I decided to enter.
There are five rounds -- a period piece, a piece in a period style, Bard's choice, masterwork, and pick-three-random-words-out-of-a-hat-and-write-a-piece-in-fifteen-minutes -- and I did my story from the Tain, a bawdy piece that skirted the line about being strictly period (though I didn't care, since I had only entered to tell the story), a sonnet/haiku for Bard's choice (the Prince announced he liked haiku, so I did a haiku form of the sonnet just for him), "Beowulfric", and a song I made up about one of the Viscounts present.
The story went over very well. As each of the Knights said why he should go first, a Laurel would counter with a better reason why she should go first. The first one had cooked the meal, the second made the scrolls that documented the reigns, the third made the clothes that the Knights wore when they weren't in armor. I won't give away the ending. :-) The audience seemed to like it, and laughed in the right places.
I performed an updated "Beowulfric" in its entirety for the first time. The year I won my three words piece was a fast "Beowulfric" that pretty much just gave the flavor of the idea -- that one of our group, a well-known baker named Wulfric (renamed for the story) had killed Grendel with his strong hands. This also went over well, though the three people present who got their heads bitten off by Grendel were a little surprised. :-) I wasn't sure how a long piece in the verse style of the original would play to a large audience, but it seemed to work.
The trick to doing well with the three words piece is to have a very good idea of what you're going to do in advance. When I did "Beowulfric" originally I knew setting out that I would do my piece in Anglo-Saxon verse a la "Beowulf". This time I decided I would sing a song about one of the knights present, and wrote the chorus (such as it was) in advance. I had never sung in public before, but I kept the song's range well within what I could do, and it seemed to go over well.
There were six competitors, all of whom were very good. The woman who wrote "Fair Mistlands" (the anthem of the principality) competed, singing that as her masterwork. She got a standing ovation (started by me). I expected that
falzalot would win, since she had excellent pieces, a good singing voice, and had never won before.This being the 25th anniversary of the event, the current Bard had invited all the past Bards to attend, of which seventeen did. We previous Bards (members of the Order of the Golden Branch) stood in a line, and passed the winner's token from hand to hand from earliest winner on down to the current Bard, who announced the winner.
Which was me.
I was completely floored.
I'm also now the answer to the trivia question, Who is the first member of the Order of the Golden Branch to win the Bard of the Mists competition? :-)
