This bonus episode isn’t an advert for Magonomia, which is a game of Renaissance wizardry, published by some of the Ars Magica authors, but you should check it out at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shewstonepublishing/magonomia-the-rpg-of-renaissance-wizardry A note on conflict of interest: if it funds I will be writing some of their stretch goals.
It’s a game of a Renaissance wizardry it doesn’t use as magic as noun and verb system and it uses wizardry from the time, rather than Ars Magica’s high fantasy wizardry. It allows us to start mining without filing the serial numbers off for some of the folklore that appeared somewhat later than we usually use. The other thing is that because Magonomia is set in England, at least in its initial publications, this allows us to do something slightly different with fairies.
When I reworked fairies, conceptually, I used the idea that they were the spirits of borderlands: of liminal states. One of the advantages of this is that it allows us to take widely dispersed cultural traditions and put them in the same category. You can put djinn and ghula and sprites in the same group. In Magonomia, because it’s geographically more isolated, the faerie traditions are more coherent. You can be rather more exact about what fairies are.
So to celebrate the launch of Magonomia, I’d like to share with you something from LibriVox. The following is a Churn supper song. Churn suppers are an English tradition, I believe, from the north of England. To celebrate the end of the harvest, the landlord would pass around a churn of cream, as a luxury to be shared by the field workers. When you listen to this churn song you’ll notice that it’s a spell. One of its functions is that when fairies are attendants of the churn supper, they are welcomed, but after they’ve participated they’re unable to harm anyone who’s at the churn supper while they’re on their way home.
This recording was released into the public domain by LibriVox. Thanks again to the entire LibriVox team.
The Churn Supper Song
Text from “Ancient Poems, Ballads and Songs of the Peasantry of England, taken down from oral recitation and transcribed from private manuscripts, rare broadsides and scarce publications” edited by Robert Bell.
[In some of the more remote dales of Craven it is customary at the close of the hay-harvest for the farmers to give an entertainment to their men; this is called the churn supper; a name which Eugene Aram traces to ‘the immemorial usage of producing at such suppers a great quantity of cream in a churn, and circulating it in cups to each of the rustic company, to be eaten with bread.’ At these churn-suppers the masters and their families attend the entertainment, and share in the general mirth. The men mask themselves, and dress in a grotesque manner, and are allowed the privilege of playing harmless practical jokes on their employers, &c. The churn-supper song varies in different dales, but the following used to be the most popular version. In the third verse there seems to be an allusion to the clergyman’s taking tythe in kind, on which occasions he is generally accompanied by two or three men, and the parish clerk. The song has never before been printed. There is a marked resemblance between it and a song of the date of 1650, called A Cup of Old Stingo. See Popular Music of the Olden Time, I., 308.]
p. 163God rest you, merry gentlemen!
Be not movèd at my strain,
For nothing study shall my brain,
But for to make you laugh:
For I came here to this feast,
For to laugh, carouse, and jest,
And welcome shall be every guest,
To take his cup and quaff.
Cho. Be frolicsome, every one,
Melancholy none;
Drink about!
See it out,
And then we’ll all go home,
And then we’ll all go home!
This ale it is a gallant thing,
It cheers the spirits of a king;
It makes a dumb man strive to sing,
Aye, and a beggar play!
A cripple that is lame and halt,
And scarce a mile a day can walk,
When he feels the juice of malt,
Will throw his crutch away.
Cho. Be frolicsome, &c.
’Twill make the parson forget his men,—
’Twill make his clerk forget his pen;
’Twill turn a tailor’s giddy brain,
And make him break his wand,
The blacksmith loves it as his life,—
It makes the tinkler bang his wife,—
Aye, and the butcher seek his knife
When he has it in his hand!
Cho. Be frolicsome, &c.
So now to conclude, my merry boys, all,
Let’s with strong liquor take a fall,
Although the weakest goes to the wall,
p. 164The best is but a play!
For water it concludes in noise,
Good ale will cheer our hearts, brave boys;
Then put it round with a cheerful voice,
We meet not every day.
Cho. Be frolicsome, &c.
Games From Folktales 