“There’s no greater giggle than hitting someone on the head with a stick,” said one participant of the appeal of battles in the Society of Creative Anachronism.
WEST BARNSTABLE – The place was The Barony of Smoking Rocks. Men in armor battled to the death and women in flowing dresses shot arrows with competitive fervor. Medieval music was in the air.
The year was sometime between 600 and 1600 a.d., a thousand-year period in which Europeans emerged from the dark ages into the Renaissance.
But this was also 2014, and the barony was holding a time-travel potluck in West Barnstable.
The Barony of Smoking Rocks is a chapter of the Society of Creative Anachronism, a medieval recreation group that was started in 1966 by a group of college students on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. After they graduated from college, members of the original group spread the concept around the country and around the world.
On Cape Cod, the Barony of Smoking Rocks is the local SCA chapter. It stretches north to Plymouth and south to the border Rhode Island.
The name Smoking Rocks is a reference to writings of Bartholomew Gosnold who is said to have discovered Cape Cod in the 1500s. His travel logs included descriptions of whale sightings and the fact that the Native Americans referred to their spouts as “smoking rocks.”
Earlier this summer, the Barony of Smoking Rocks held a potluck, as a sort of show-and-tell for those interested in joining.
The gathering was at the home of Ruth and Jack Bechtold of West Barnstable, whose barony names are Marguerite von Elfenau and Johannes von Huegel.
Upon joining Smoking Rocks or any SCA chapter, it becomes necessary to take on a persona. That entails picking an era (anytime from 600 to 1600) and a name, one that could have been used during that era.
Purchase Required
To read the rest of this one Longform story, please purchase access. The price for this one story is $3.00. To access all of our Longform stories, choose a $5.00 monthly membership or a $50.00 yearly membership.
