From The Page (August, 1981):
The Coronet Tourney of An Tir will be held on Labor Day Weekend in Lions Gate. The site is McLean Boy Scout Camp and is 2 miles north of the US/Canada border. There will be a site fee of $3.00 per person, whether camping or not.
Tentative schedule: (omitted)
This will be a stright double-elimination tourney (no best of three final).
Late Friday evening, a soup kitchen will be available to welcome weary travellers. There will be an auction held on Saturday afternoon to benefit the College of Scribes of An Tir. If you have anything to donate, please contact the autocrat in advance. Saturday afternoon we also plan to hold two live chess games--one for boffers and one for armoured fighters, if enough players are found. Sunday evening a nourshing soup of stew and roll will be available for $1.00 prepaid per serving. Please have the money in to the autocrats by September 1. Bardic circles will be held Saturday and Sunday evenings. Throughout the weekend there will be archery, including Royal Rounds, Inter-kingdom Rounds and possibly shooting at the clout. Monday morning there will be boffer lists for smalls under 10 years, and an Ithral meeting. All entrants in the lists must supply their device painted in waterproof paint on a heater shaped piece of thin wood 3" x 4". The top 1/2" should be left unpainted.
Contests: A story-telling contest will be judged at the Sunday Bardic circle. A contest for a medieval fire-starting device and an axe-throwing contest will be held during the weekend. The Kingdom Costumers Guild contest will be judged on Sunday afternoon. For more information please contact Gerhard or Amanda Kendal of Westmoreland (contact info omitted).
From The Page (September, 1981):
(This is from a single-page insert in this issue of The Page, obviously too late
to change the copy for the Coronet Tourney event listed earlier in the issue ...)
Greetings & Glad Tidings
Unto the people of the West, and most particularly unto the citizens of An Tir -
Their Highnesses Ulfred and Sumingo have directed me to inform you that the Board of Directors of the Society, at its August meeting, concluded that the Principality of An Tir has successfully resolved all the questions which had led the Board to wish to postpone the elevation of the Principality to Kingdom status.
Their Highnesses have therefore determined and decreed that the tournament to be held on the fifth, sixth and seventh of September in Lions Gate will be the first Crown Tourney of the incipient Kingdom of An Tir. The victor and consort will be crowned at the Twelfth Night celebration in Madrone, and the days of the Kingdom of An Tir will flow from that date.
To ensure that the requirements for procalamation are wholly fulfilled, this flier includes an edited copy of the tourney announcement from the August Crier. The artwork on this page is gratefully taken from the same source.
Wishing you all prosperity, I remain -
Yours in service to the Society -
(signed)
Mistress Hilary of Serendip
Seneschale of the West
(The copy reads very much like that shown above with the only real change being the reference to the Coronet Tournament to "First Crown of An Tir".)
Personal Reminisces:
"I attended this event with my (then) fiance Antadina du Nordlac, although for the life of me, I am not sure why we decided to attend this event, as opposed to any other central Kingdom event. We flew down to Seattle from Fairbanks, Alaska, and were met at the airport by Mistress Serena Cleindori of Bagulay, who was at the time the Arts officer of the Principality, and my primary contact in An Tir (lots of correspondence between officers). We went to the home she shared with her lord David of Bagulay, and finished packing, and left for the event. It was a long drive, even from Seattle.
"Serena and David had made arrangements to borrow someone's tent/pavilion for our use, and it was already set up when we got to the site, which was great. Friday night was just greeting folk, and fielding the question that was in everyone's mind "Will the North (Alaska was not yet 'Oertha') be part of An Tir or the West". The only thing we could say was "we don't know" -- which was true. At that point, no decision had been made. Obviously that had to be done soon ...
"This event sticks out in my mind as memorable for a variety of reasons. First, it was my first event outside of Alaska, and it was a major Kingdom event. I came down with expectations that were shattered. I was thinking of a large event as being a large Alaskan SCA event, and good lord was I overwhelmed. The PEOPLE! LOTS OF PEOPLE! Everyone was friendly, but I was a bit freaked out. I also had an epiphany about the Order of the Laurel, but that's a long story, and not directly part of this chronicle. I remember the size of the eric as HUGE -- and even considering that I was comparing the eric at this event to an Oerthan event, I am pretty sure that after all these years, it was close to double or more the size of a typical West Kingdom eric.
"The number of royal pavilions was daunting. If you wanted to go down that side of the eric, you ended up practically doing a crabwalk (sideways) so you could bow to the different royalty. I know that the King and Queen of the West, the Princes and Princesses of An Tir, The Mists, and Cynagua were there, but I recall that at least a couple of Kings and Queens of other Kingdoms were in attendance. As I remember it, many people chose to walk the LONG way around the eric, to spare their legs from all that bowing ...
"The invocation of the Crown Lists took a long time, because all the different Royalty had something to say to An Tir, all of which amounted to "You are a full Kingdom now, be proud!" and so on. One speech stood out, and that was Maythen (Princess of the Mists in her own right) stood up and gave a rousing speech, and then William (her Princess and husband) stood up and said something to the effect of "I have her doing my fighting, and now she's speaking for me!" and he sat down, adding a nice humorous bit in a long series of speeches.
"The actual invocation was pretty spectacular, I recall the fighters and consorts being led in by a group of minstrels singing The Brave and Bonny Host (effectively the An Tiri national anthem at the time), a beautiful song -- most of the populace (and there were hundreds of people there) chimed in on the chorus.
"I remember a point where I was sitting down, a bit exhausted and overwhelmed, and having Mistress Serena (a lovely lady) in middle easterns bending over me -- and my getting quite an eyeful of cleavage, and being very embarrassed by it (turning an amazing shade of red, I am sure). Silly, now, looking back, but ...
"I don't recall how far into the lists Edward Zifran of Gendy had gotten, but I managed to be watching the tourney when he took his second death in the standard double-elimination tournament. Since it was his second death, Sir Edward did a standing backflip in his armor (with helm and all), and landed on his feet, before dying (taking some time to do so). It was spectacular, to put it mildly. It was so good that he received a standing ovation, and performed an encore, staggering across the field and dying at his lady's feet. Impressive ...
"Court that evening went on into the dark, and further into the dark, to the point that I recall some folk may have gotten frostbite. There were a couple of HUGE bardic circles, and while I was active in Bardic Circles in the north, I got really shy performing in front of all these people, and ended up listening, and meandering about and not getting directly involved. Again, I was mostly overwhelmed (and a bit shy).
"The next morning (Sunday, I think) I woke up to something that I don't think I've had the pleasure of waking up to again at an event -- the sound of a hammered dulcimer being played VERY well, somewhere near my tent. That was so cool, and added an amazing bit of ambience to the morning.
"We left with Serena and David, got back to their place, and showered and got cleaned up. We had time before going back to Alaska to see a movie, and since Fairbanks was not on the "A Circuit" at the time, we went out and saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in the largest movie theatre I think either of us had ever seen (which amused David of Baguley, as I recall). Pleased as punch, and very tired, but happy about it, we headed off to the airport and eventually back home ..." -- Hirsch von Henford
Description of this event (if any), taken from The Page, or from memory of at least one person who attended the event.
The West Kingdom History Website was created by and is maintained by Hirsch von Henford (mka Ken Mayer).