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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