to medieval re-enactment various/ff
Posted: Wed Nov 01, 2023 11:02 am
I dunno if this can be considered TUG but i will share.
Where I come from is full of small medieval towns, and many of these organize medieval festivals, with a large part of the population dressed as in the Middle Ages, parades in medieval costume, inns with medieval cuisine and typical activities of the past.
Some time ago a group of older boys and girls had an idea: since in these medieval festivals everyone always wants to be knights and princesses, they would instead be beggars.
Then it's not like this because nowdays at many medieval festivals people dress like commoners and noly few as nobles, but this group of beggars still organizes themselves to be present at medieval festivals and act as a side dish, even organizing skits with those dressed as men-at-arms.
Obviously who is part of this group now? Me and my friend, after all one of the founders is an uncle of hers and he brought us in as soon as we were old enough (9 years old if I remember correctly).
One of these villages has a group of re-enactors who act as city guards and this year they have also set up a series of pillories, both the one for the wrists and head and the one for the ankles.
this summer, the day before the start of the medieval festival, which would last 4 days, the head of the group of guards came to ask us to organize our usual skits and my friend and I proposed ourselves as usual, we are the most the smallest of the group and the fastest, we really look like two street urchins ready to do some little thefts.
Our costume, which we redo every year because at the end of the season it tends to be almost destroyed and made of raw fabric, first aged with special products, and then badly sewn.
Usually a tunic made by cutting a hole for the head in a strip of fabric and then sewing it to the sides, and a fairy skirt from torn fabric turned at the waist and with slits for running.
Then the face and exposed skin is smeared with makeup.
I don't even have to say that we are barefoot
the usual scene is that at a certain time we try to steal something from a stall (the merchant agrees) and the guards run after us and catch us, then they take us to their barracks and after a while, secretly, we we go out and prepare for the next theft.
It is not difficult to run barefoot in medieval villages, almost all of them have smooth stone floors, or at most rounded stones, in fact we with bare soles grip the ground better than others with leather boots.
At the first of these scenes, however, instead of taking us to the barracks, they dragged us to the square where the two pillories were.
"Oh no" said my friend and the two guards who were taking us asked us if it was okay, that in any case a guard would always be near us and that they wouldn't lock the door.
You can imagine what our response was and therefore we ended up in the pillory.
My friend was locked in the one that catches your wrists and head and you have to stand, while I was made to sit on a low stool, then they locked me in another pillory with only two holes in my ankles, this instrument had a ring on top and immediately they tightened leather thongs around my wrists which would then have to be tied to the ring making me bend forward, they put them loose enough that I would free myself, what fools.
I immediately asked him to really tighten them so I could pull on the laces because maintaining that position while pretending that the laces were really holding was tiring.
I told him that I would cry and ask for mercy, but that I was pretending, in reality my only concern was that I had felt a couple of stitches break in the side seam of the shirt and I was afraid that in that position from the side you could see everything , I wasn't wearing anything under my shirt.
they kept us like that for about twenty minutes, then they released us and asked us if everything was ok and if it was okay to do skits like this.
Obviously we were very happy, and we suggested that we implement something, such as allowing the kids to tickle the feet of the one of us who would be tied to the pillory by the ankles, but since we already had black feet from walking barefoot before they would I found a bucket with a brush to clean them once in the pillory, and then some bird feathers.
For the remaining four days we did this skit at least eight times a day, alternating places, so as to share the tickles.
Where I come from is full of small medieval towns, and many of these organize medieval festivals, with a large part of the population dressed as in the Middle Ages, parades in medieval costume, inns with medieval cuisine and typical activities of the past.
Some time ago a group of older boys and girls had an idea: since in these medieval festivals everyone always wants to be knights and princesses, they would instead be beggars.
Then it's not like this because nowdays at many medieval festivals people dress like commoners and noly few as nobles, but this group of beggars still organizes themselves to be present at medieval festivals and act as a side dish, even organizing skits with those dressed as men-at-arms.
Obviously who is part of this group now? Me and my friend, after all one of the founders is an uncle of hers and he brought us in as soon as we were old enough (9 years old if I remember correctly).
One of these villages has a group of re-enactors who act as city guards and this year they have also set up a series of pillories, both the one for the wrists and head and the one for the ankles.
this summer, the day before the start of the medieval festival, which would last 4 days, the head of the group of guards came to ask us to organize our usual skits and my friend and I proposed ourselves as usual, we are the most the smallest of the group and the fastest, we really look like two street urchins ready to do some little thefts.
Our costume, which we redo every year because at the end of the season it tends to be almost destroyed and made of raw fabric, first aged with special products, and then badly sewn.
Usually a tunic made by cutting a hole for the head in a strip of fabric and then sewing it to the sides, and a fairy skirt from torn fabric turned at the waist and with slits for running.
Then the face and exposed skin is smeared with makeup.
I don't even have to say that we are barefoot
the usual scene is that at a certain time we try to steal something from a stall (the merchant agrees) and the guards run after us and catch us, then they take us to their barracks and after a while, secretly, we we go out and prepare for the next theft.
It is not difficult to run barefoot in medieval villages, almost all of them have smooth stone floors, or at most rounded stones, in fact we with bare soles grip the ground better than others with leather boots.
At the first of these scenes, however, instead of taking us to the barracks, they dragged us to the square where the two pillories were.
"Oh no" said my friend and the two guards who were taking us asked us if it was okay, that in any case a guard would always be near us and that they wouldn't lock the door.
You can imagine what our response was and therefore we ended up in the pillory.
My friend was locked in the one that catches your wrists and head and you have to stand, while I was made to sit on a low stool, then they locked me in another pillory with only two holes in my ankles, this instrument had a ring on top and immediately they tightened leather thongs around my wrists which would then have to be tied to the ring making me bend forward, they put them loose enough that I would free myself, what fools.
I immediately asked him to really tighten them so I could pull on the laces because maintaining that position while pretending that the laces were really holding was tiring.
I told him that I would cry and ask for mercy, but that I was pretending, in reality my only concern was that I had felt a couple of stitches break in the side seam of the shirt and I was afraid that in that position from the side you could see everything , I wasn't wearing anything under my shirt.
they kept us like that for about twenty minutes, then they released us and asked us if everything was ok and if it was okay to do skits like this.
Obviously we were very happy, and we suggested that we implement something, such as allowing the kids to tickle the feet of the one of us who would be tied to the pillory by the ankles, but since we already had black feet from walking barefoot before they would I found a bucket with a brush to clean them once in the pillory, and then some bird feathers.
For the remaining four days we did this skit at least eight times a day, alternating places, so as to share the tickles.
