Sometimes I think scribes hate me. :-)
No, not really. I kid.[1]
Sometimes, the calligraphy and illumination end of the collaboration has ideas that make my life challenging. When writing a legal charter-style text, there are certain letters that are easy to start with -- B, F, W, I, and S are usually quite adaptable.
Then there's that moment when the scribe says, "The text can be no more than 150 words and it needs to start with a C."
Okay, then. :-)
Casting about for ideas, I remembered that Saint Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians, and decided to deviate a little from a standard charter text. It's more SCAdian than period, but not so excruciatingly so that it bugs me. I like how it came out and the actual finished scroll is truly gorgeous.
Cecilia, beloved and holy lady of music, we pray you look with favor upon your disciple Margreþe la Fauvelle. Lend her sweetness of voice and sureness of beat; make her fingers nimble and her ear keen; keep her instruments in tune and bless the choirs she leads.
And then, upon 9 December in the fifty-second year of the Society, the Tsar and Tsaritsa, Ivan and Matilde, having heard the praises of the said Margreþe sung unto Saint Cecilia by the most noble of their many servants, did invest the said Margreþe with the Order of the Laurel, to have and hold the same freely and fully hereafter, along with the following arms by Letters Patents: Per saltire vert and Or, a sun in splendor counterchanged. And so declaring, instructing and commanding, the Tsar and Tsaritsa set below their ensigns manual in perpetual memorial.
[1] In seriousness, working with Mistress Arianna of Wynthrope was a delight. She was just not as prepared for me doing my crazy thing with words in the way, say Eva or Thyra or Nataliia or Eleanor are.
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