Marian of Edwinstowe

[cellio]

Marian of Edwinstowe, more recently known as Old Marian, died last night. Marian had long been a fixture in the SCA when I joined. I met her at my first Pennsic, where she and Johan ran the Sated Tyger Inn, which was selling tasty period food long before most people were trying to cook such. That inn closed, and some years later she (and Chiron and maybe others) founded the Battlefield Bakery, where she continued the tradition.

I didn't know her especially well but I visited her bakery every Pennsic and, during the years I travelled a lot in the East Kingdom, I encountered and spoke with her quite a bit. She was gracious and friendly and always had time to spare for me and countless other nobodies (as I was at the time). I always enjoyed talking with her.

I remember when she resigned all of her awards. She made a point of telling the orders a year in advance -- so, she said, that there could be no question of whether she had done this because of some snit or disliked royalty. This was typical of the care she showed for others' feelings.

I regret that I did not get to know her well. Even so I will miss her, and her friends and family will miss her a thousand times more. The society is a poorer place today.

Comments

[ariannawyn.livejournal.com]

I believe she thought they were inauthentic and a distraction from what she wanted to do in the SCA, which was cook. Noble women didn't do that, so the peerages were an encumbrance on her persona.

I had the same problem at one point in my SCA career - I started as a tavern wench, and got bollixed up by being first a Kingdom officer and then a peer. When my persona become a hopeless muddle I decided to just shrug and not worry about it, but Marian chose to go back to being just Marian and keep her persona.

[cellio]

That's how I remember it.

Early on I realized that I couldn't do both a viking persona and documentable instrumental and choral music. I wasn't interested in giving up either, so I just let them co-exist. I could always rationalize music as being something I learned after leaving Hedeby to visit the Debatable Lands, if pressed. On a very few occasions I got someone to help me navigate late-period clothing so I could dress appropriately for a performance, when it was really important, but otherwise I haven't worried about it. (I no longer have the viking persona, but the mis-match remains -- the new persona, while relocated 1800 miles, is not relocated in time.)