Medieval frolic / Nigerian decline
Today: Anna Merlan author of REPUBLIC OF LIES: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise to Power; and Jídé Salawu, writer and editor at Olongo Africa.
Issue No. 553
Prithee, Faire Maiden
Anna Merlan
The Lucky Ones
Jídé Salawu
Prithee, Faire Maiden
by Anna Merlan
Near the end of my first and perhaps only Renaissance Faire, as I stood wilting in the heat and dazedly eating a frozen banana, a medium-size child crept up and quietly gave me the plague. She was maybe eight years old, her face hidden in a furry gray rat mask. She sidled up beside me and my friend and quickly stamped both of us with a drawing of a little flea.
“You got the plague,” her mom called over. We clapped appreciatively as the little rat stealthily moved onto her next victim.
Irwindale is a flat and sleepy desert town in the San Gabriel Valley, about 20 miles east of Los Angeles. Here, in a mercilessly sunny park beside the Santa Fe Dam, we had come to attend the 63rd annual Renaissance Pleasure Faire, the nation’s oldest renaissance faire. The roasting-hot celebration is home to an absolutely flabbergasting number of people and things. Blacksmiths, archery ranges, a sword swallower, a “gnome hunt” for the children, hair-braiding “for maidens,” face-painting, juggling, jousting, children beaming in delighted confusion while being knighted; a young and grave Queen Elizabeth, in a heavy, beaded and embroidered dress and makeup that was probably lighter than historically accurate, being paraded through a solemn crowd; aerialists spinning themselves high into the air. My brain gently melted, from overstimulation and from heat, my flower crown slipping into my eyes.
Keep us breathing fire!
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