Lissa is one of those people who one hopes to see in the SCA – interested in so many aspects of medieval life, and always trying new things. She’s become aces at fiber arts – spinning, weaving and knitting – not to mention illumination and cooking, all in addition to fencing. She recently won the baronial Arts and Sciences Championship with her fiber work. For her excellence in these artistic endeavors, Their Excellencies Bhakail made her a companion of the Harlequin, our baronial arts and sciences award, and Annys and I were given the commission for her scroll.

For her scroll, I wanted something distinctly Lissa.

One thing was for sure, I wanted it to be different. While noodling on “different”, I hit upon the idea of writing the scroll text on a ribbon of parchment and winding it onto a drop spindle, a tool for which Lis has shown incredible affinity. Annys and I worked out how we would do that, and agreed that we should use the same hand as we did for Griff’s Salamander, since we were dealing with a similar time period.

With that decision made, I set about finding a suitable text. Lissa has written several scrolls now, and has gone to period sources for almost all of them – I figured I would try the same. Eventually, I settled on Kit Marlowe’s Hero and Leander, producing the scroll text in a series of (mostly) rhyming couplets in the style of that poem. Here is the finished peice (spelling is accurate to the source material):

Now view these opposit two citties wale,
The one Bhakail, the other Hartshorn-Dale.
At Hartshorn, Lissa dwelt; under the very hill,
VVhom muses thus bestowed hand-work so well.

Her kirtle blewe, vvhereon vvas many a staine,
Made vvith the blood of vvretched projects slaine.
Vpon her head she ware virtewe as a wreath,
And golden huwed the apron she ware beneath,

Because she gave more to Us than just her weft,
And of such vvondrous beautie her bereft:
A Monmouth cap, skein of wool, a garter,
Her painted scrolls receiv’d and kept with ardor,

And said such as knew her works of hand,
Elysabeth, thou art made for wondrous craft:
Why art thou not a Harlequin, and besung of all?
Though her work be faire, she was not one withall.

Whence Our admiring eyes more pleasure tooke,
Than Lis, on works of hand fixing Our looke.
Now Our champion of Arts and Sciences crown’d,
Cause’d foorth the order’s word to sound,

Which vvatchfull order has Us aware’d,
But move Us this day these words prepar’d.
With both her hands she made it thus,
So as a Harlequin she is made by Us,

At Noisemakers, Lissa knelt; Lis the faire,
Upon the fifth of Februarius, in fortie-fifth, the year.

The spindle was donated by Iseault Blaecstan, and the text is Higgins Eternal on pergamenata affixed to the spindle using Annys’ handspun. Unfortunately, the way we rolled the ribbon, you can’t see any of the cinquefoils (Lissa’s personal badge) which we used to separate the verses. Bummer. However, at some point I will post the “cheat-sheet” we’ll be making to fit into the display case, which will be much more traditional and easy to read.

In addition to the scroll, there is usually a token for our baronial awards – in the case of the Harlequin, it is a jester’s head on a blue cord. Again trying for something painfully Lissa-specific, Alesone and I came up with the idea of a vitrue (Lissa usually wears a draped head veil, which Tadcaster has come to refer to as her “virtue”) with a period representation of a jester’s head and blue trim. This meant that Alesone and I went off to research medival jesters (a dangerous undertaking!), and we found that the “jester hat” that we think of was originally a hood-type thing designed to look like a donkey, with large ears, often with bells. After some time, there was a tendency to add some sort of protruding stuffed animal (among… other things). Here are the two sources we liked best: one, and the other.

We felt very strongly that since Lissa is so into fiber art, that the stuffed animal on the hat should be a sheep. Based on these, and that decision, here is my skecth and what Alesone turned it into.

Jester photo courtesy of Alesone; scroll picture courtesy of Lissa.