SCA you know those crazy guys that beat each other up with sticks

**Kiltedfirepiper** · 20th November 05, 01:55 AM

ok I got my first taste of kilts in the SCA

http://www.sca.org/

and I was wondering ho wmany of us partake in medevial renanctment?

ALSO I plan on going to my 9th

http://www.estrellawar.org/

this year (feb-06 ) and I was wondering who of my kilted breathern might be there too?

Scott

(edited to remove HTML tags - Mike)

**davedove** · 20th November 05, 05:33 AM

I was never in the SCA, but for about a year I did participate in some live action gaming. You know, the guys who beat on each other with foam padded weapons. This was long before I'd ever worn a kilt and I quit after it began to be flooded with college aged kids who only wanted to get drunk at the camp outs. Even when I participated, I didn't get into the big battles, as I did my best fighting from behind, with a dagger.

Hey, I was a thief and couldn't wear all the protective armor of the fighters!

**M. A. C. Newsome** · 20th November 05, 05:44 AM

I started participating in the SCA when I was 16 in High School, but really haven't been active at all since I started breeding my own clan. :-) I think I've been to maybe two events since the birth of our first over 3 years ago.

But that's actually where I started my research into historic Highland clothing. Wearing kilts in the SCA always bothered me. There seemed to be (and still is, I suppose) the assumption that anyone with a Scottish persona had to wear a kilt. When you consider that the first recorded evidence of the wearing of the feilidh-mhor (great kilt) dates to 1594, and that the SCA period supposedly ends at 1600 AD, then in reality very few of your Scottish personas should be in kilts. I did wear the feilidh-mhor on occasion, but most of the time wore a leine.

Have fun!

Matt

**GMan** · 20th November 05, 02:58 PM

I haven't been involved for several years, it seems as life goes on, I cannot find the time, Oh well.

**bikercelt1** · 20th November 05, 09:32 PM

The few local SCA events I've been too were fun enough but as soon as it got to anything I knew about I found the historical accuracy to be severely limited. I suppose everyone has to start somewhere but I thought the local SCA folks were just to much inot the fantasy/role playing mode for my taste. I do study with a sword master/karate sensei who is very knowledgable about celtic martial arts and history though. www.baileysacademy.com

Jamie

**prattw** · 20th November 05, 09:34 PM

Originally Posted by Kiltedfirepiper

ok I got my first taste of kilts in the SCA

http://www.sca.org/

and I was wondering ho wmany of us partake in medevial renanctment?

ALSO I plan on going to my 9th

http://www.estrellawar.org/

this year (feb-06 ) and I was wondering who of my kilted breathern might be there too?

Scott

(edited to remove HTML tags - Mike)

My son-in-law is King of the Kingdom of Vegas in the ECS. He and my daughter are regulars at Estrella War. When they married last year it was at the Las Vegas Renfaire. Both families were in quasi-period Scottish garb, as in appropriate shirts, hose and shoes, but wearing tailored kilts rather than actual philabegs. (The ECS cutoff date is actualy 1650, interpreted loosely, so philabegs would be marginal, but barely in range, if you fudge a bit. Neither Grant nor Gordon tartans would be in period, of course, but if you just think of them as tartan . . .)

Matt, for belted plaids to be worn by a whole group of Scottish mercs in 1594, they had to have been in use for a while. After all, they didn't just invent them for the job. Their being worn in 1594 certainly makes a date of origin of 1580 or a bit earlier likely and in fact lends credence to the descriptions ca 1575 that could be read either way. That's still pretty marginal for the SCA time limits, of course.

Will Pratt

**Sir Robert** · 21st November 05, 05:34 AM

I am a member of the SCA although I will let it lapse as I have lost interest.

The official time period for the SCA is 400 AD to 1700 AD. The SCA have problems with clothes and weapons vs personas. For safety reasons they wear either leather or plate or a combination of the two. The fights are scored as if wearing 11th century chainmaile. The persona might be say a Scot from 950AD and we don't really know for sure if they wore kilts or brats or what. When in "court" all SCA wear "court clothes" up to Elizibethen times.

Now the SCA knows that these are horrendous anacronisms but they do at least know the differance.

**Luke MacGillie** · 21st November 05, 05:48 AM

I did a few gigs with them in panama, but was not impressed with the overall authenticity. Plastic Armor, elf ears and all. The outside of events conduct of some folks was of the type that would not allow one to pass a Lifestyle polygraph for a security clearance so I moved on.

I think the "We do things the way they should have been, not the way they really were" pretty much sums it up. Perhaps Im just weird, or just too jaded from my time in re-enacting, but I dont treat joe sixpack like he is the King of England, since a whole bunch of 18th Cent re-enactors have had the opportunity to go to England and meet the Royal Family, be inspected by real royals ect.

If you have a reenacting itch to scratch I would suggest either going with 1745 period events, or one of the other 18th Century time periods.

Luke

**M. A. C. Newsome** · 21st November 05, 06:20 AM

Sir Robert writes:

The official time period for the SCA is 400 AD to 1700 AD.

This is incorrect. The very first sentence one reads at www.sca.org is:
"The SCA is an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe."

Pre-seventeenth century means the year 1600 or earlier.

Robert also writes:

The persona might be say a Scot from 950AD and we don't really know for sure if they wore kilts or brats or what.

Yes, we can be sure that Scots did not wear kilts in 950 AD because the historical record shows that the kilt simply did not exist then. If a person is wearing a kilt and claiming to portray a Scottish Highlander from the tenth century, he is simply wrong. We don't know a whole lot about what Highlanders did wear in the tenth century, but as we can find no evidence of anything related to the kilt prior to the very end of the sixteenth century, it would be baseless to assume that this garment was worn six centuries earlier.

Will Prat writes:

Matt, for belted plaids to be worn by a whole group of Scottish mercs in 1594, they had to have been in use for a while. After all, they didn't just invent them for the job. Their being worn in 1594 certainly makes a date of origin of 1580 or a bit earlier likely and in fact lends credence to the descriptions ca 1575 that could be read either way.

Will, I appreciate what you are saying here, and agree with you to a certain extent. I think it highly unlikely that the group being described in 1594 as wearing belted plaids were the very first people to have worn that style. However, the fact remains that (as I have stated) the first recorded evidence of the belted plaid being worn is in 1594. It may likely have been worn prior to that, but any earlier date is just speculation. I think it is remarkable that of the many other sixteenth century accounts of Highland Dress that we do have, only one or two could possibly be imagined to describe the belted plaid. So it certainly wasn't common prior to the last decade of the sixteenth century.

Aye,
Matt

**Sir Robert** · 21st November 05, 07:16 AM

The SCA is "understood" to be post Rome (400 AD) to about 1700. But the original folks were closer to renfair types including yes, Elves. Today they get closer to the Re-enactor than Rennies. With a world wide organization there is a LOT of variation.

The fact is that anything you say (about the SCA) is likely to be true to one extent or another.