Twelfth Night Celebration Feast
I flew home a day early because I knew I could not miss this. In celebration of the Christmas season, albeit a bit delayed, Milites de Bec had their annual Twelfth Night Feast. Twelfth Night was traditionally the final feast of the Twelve Days of Christmas and the beginning of the liturgical season of Epiphany, when the wise men were said to have come to Bethlehem, around January 6th.
I walked into the Whychurst Longhall and as my eyes adjusted to the dark, the scene in front of me had me grinning like an idiot. A fire blazed up from the centre pit and the noise of much feasting and merriment joined the smoke and filled the rafters. I quickly hopped into several layers of borrowed kit and took my place at the tables. The dress was a bit too short for my legs so my jeans poked out the bottom, but it was dark so no one could see.
The feast itself was impressive. Candles lined the tables so you could see all the meat and cheeses and bread and cakes and eggs and various other edibles. There were large pots of beef and chicken hanging over the fire to mix into the stew and, of course, it being a celebration of the Christmas season, mulled wine and cider were present. Everything was absolutely delicious
As part of the festivities everyone had prepared a form of entertainment. Cecilia and I sang a few Medieval Carols, there was a demonstration of a Medieval dance, a tragic love story acted out to music, some poems were read, myths were told and Rob read an Old English passage from Beowulf which gave me chills. Tim dressed up as a Wendigo for a pantomime sketch, shedding bits of wool as he went. There were a couple games involving fighting over sticks and hitting one another with stuffed cloth sacks- good fun all around. After each performance, our Lord Bryn rewarded us with chocolate gold and Tim was retained into House D'Brun by Baron Lukas.
The evening was filled with traditional songs and tales - and then some less accurate ones. For example, "We Will Rock You" rewritten to "We Are Normans" and I myself brought forth a historic poem from Ancient Canada, all the way back from the 18th century and the Klondike Gold Rush: The Cremation of Sam McGee. We had to pick a poem to memorize in Mrs. Allan's grade 8 class and I've never forgot it. Slightly out of it's time, but a good story told by firelight will always take on an other worldly feel to it.
As the feast wound to a close we all set up our sleeping bags near the fire. I was buried under a few layers of wool blankets and fell asleep listening to the wind.