Clann Handbook

The Clann Handbook is a treasure trove of information for how the nuts and bolts of our events go together. This is not a guide on how to portray the life of a 5th Century Celt! This document details how we maintain the modern conveniences that we use at our three camping events each year.

Clann Kitchen TrailerOne critical component of the Clann Handbook is the packing and setup of the Clann 'kitchen trailer' which is towed to events and serves up hot and cold running water, hauls the heavy cast iron and poles used when pitching our dining flys, and jockey box setup and taps. This book describes how to maintain the trailer, set up the tents, and basically do the chores that need to get done during the course of an event.

• This version of the Handbook is in PDF. The original of this document is currently kept as a Microsoft Word document. To edit the Handbook for future revisions, you'll need that document. I will consider this version 1 of the Clan Handbook. Any changes made hereafter should be marked with an appropriate revision number.
• Hot water to the onboard sink and kitchen shower (when set up) is provided by Nomad, our propane fired water heater which is built into the trailer. A manual for Nomad is attached to this page below.

Attachment	Size
The Clan Handbook.pdf	321.1 KB
nomad-manual.pdf	4.1 MB

Becoming a Member

Becoming a member of the Tuatha de Bhriain is a bit different from joining other groups or clubs. It can be best described as a process to foster mutual trust and ensure harmony between the newcomer and the tenured individuals of the group, while working toward the common aesthetic of Celtic re-enactment.

The hobby of medieval re-creation encompasses so many aspects, it would be a laborious task indeed for the individual to attempt a medieval atmosphere all by themselves (and in doing so who would it be enjoyed with?) In a group setting, tasks can be divided amongst the members and the many elements brought together to form an environment that can be enjoyed by many.

For a group to function with purpose, the individual is sometimes called on to sublimate a part of their individuality. However, this is sometimes difficult and not always something we want to do, especially for us Celts, who are renown for celebrating the individual.

Clann is the Gaelic word for family, and as a family, we seek to create an environment of cooperation and trust where one can feel at ease and enjoy the hobby of Celtic re-enactment to its fullest potential. It is a unique position to be in because, unlike most families, members of this family are here by choice. If this type of environment appeals to you, what you need to do is get yourself invited to one of our gatherings.

As a guest, the only things expected of you is to pay the site fee (to cover food, drink, and expenses), respect the atmosphere that we are trying to create, and have a good time. If you are completely new to the hobby, inform your host so arrangements can be made to loan you feast gear and garb to help you fit in. If you don’t already have one, you will be given an appropriate persona name.

Lets say you’ve been a guest at an event or two, you’ve really like the hobby so far, you’ve enjoyed the colorful people you’ve met and even made a few friends … So now you would like to be part of the action. What you need to do now is approach a member and tell them that you would like them to sponsor you for membership (sometimes a member might even approach you and offer).

You should understand, that the person you ask may not be able to sponsor you. Clann law only allows a member to sponsor one person at a time. In such a case the member will recommend someone else for you.

At this point, the member will go before the assembled clann and make a motion to accept you as a probationary member. On majority approval, you are now a Probate of the clann and the member who made the motion is your Sponsor.

Your sponsor assumes full responsibility for your integration with the clann. He is the main person to help you with any problems or questions you may have on clann issues. If your sponsor doesn’t have the answers you need, you can be sure he can at least tell you where to find them. He is also responsible for introducing you around to the other members and probates.

Your "job" as a probate is outlined as follows:

• Help out wherever and whenever you can


• Be a positive influence in creating a medieval atmosphere


• Learn as much as you can about the people and culture of 5th century Ireland


• Share your knowledge with others


• Display your appreciation for Celtic culture as best you can


• Familiarize yourself with the rights and responsibilities of members

Aquatint yourself with the members and other probates

You will also have two projects you must undertake before you can be made a full member. You must make yourself a torque, and you must work on your Persona Story. Depending on your particular talents, you may be asked to help out the clann by brewing, painting, writing, reading, or something much less abstract such as collecting firewood.

Though we have no set time limit, your probationary period will last about a year. Sometimes its longer, sometimes its shorter. This largely depends on the amount of effort you have shown and number of events you have attended. Remember, re-enactment is a participatory endeavor, the more you put in to it the more fun you will have, the more you will be recognized for your efforts and the more you will be praised in the song of the bards.

When your sponsor feels the time is right, he will approach you and ask you if you are ready to become a full member. Your sponsor will ask you if you are willing to abide by the laws of the clann and the judgment of its elected officials.

At a meeting your sponsor will stand up and bring up your vote for membership. You will be escorted away from the meeting area and asked to wait until sent for. During this time the clann will be discussing your accomplishments, starting with you sponsor, your deeds and input will be highlighted for the clann to judge, then other members may stand and speak on your behalf. After this, the vote will be called. A unanimous vote of "yes" is required to make you a member of the clann. After the vote, your sponsor will find you and tell you the decision of the clann.

On becoming a member, you in turn will be eligible to sponsor probates.

Some additional things for consideration

If, due to scheduling differences or for whatever reason, you find it difficult to keep in touch with your sponsor, you may switch sponsors with out any penalty providing you clear it with your current sponsor and find another willing eligible member.

Also, though not a law by any means, it is customary for potential probates who have a good friend that is a member of the clann not to be sponsored by that friend but by someone else. This is done to foster more friendships and better communication within the clann and help the "get to know you" process moving along.

Céad míle fáilte!

The Tuatha de Bhriain is a re-creation society founded in 1986 that attempts to re-enact the spirit and material culture of 5th century Ireland. While we are not officially associated with the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism), several of us are also members of that organization, and attend some SCA events.

Click "read more" for more about the organization and this site.

About this site

This web site has been established primarily to serve the members of our clann with information to help achieve our goals, but any who would find our site useful, or those who are just plain curious, are more than welcome and even encouraged to browse.

About the Tuatha de Bhriain

We are a group of like-minded individuals most of whom live on Long Island, in New York. We hold 3 events each year on or near to the ancient Celtic Holidays, two of these are weekend camp outs while the third is a day long indoor event. Pennsic Camp and VolundWe attend the Pennsic War as a group and camp in the bog near Norseland, Prechainn, Silver Phoenix, and Estmar. Four official planning meetings are held in between our events, and members have been known to host mundane gatherings like beer tastings, sausage making parties, music sessions, and hammer-ins. Many of our gatherings are planned with the goal to prepare in some way for the next event, including more official 'work party' details.

As re-enactors, we endevor to re-create the atmosphere of our chosen time period as best we can. This includes wearing period clothing, eating period foods, practicing period crafts and customs, using period technology and tools, and interacting with each other as the people of our chosen culture would have. You can check out our Photo Gallery for a better glimpse at what we do.

The key elements of our hobby are imagination, effort, and the vast amount of research found in learned texts and archeological journals. It is a challenging yet highly rewarding hobby, as well as out-right fun! If this hobby sounds like something you would enjoy, check out our How To section to find out more about the possibility of becoming part of our clann. If you are far from our area, or interested in a different culture, you can still join into our online discussions as a website member. We try to keep this site geared to period pursuits, but we also maintain a more mundane mailing list if you just want to chew the fat.

Céad míle fáilte means 'A hundred thousand welcomes'

Dar Crom!

DAR CROM !

by Aonghus

How many times have you been at an event and called upon a foreign deity to express surprise, amazement, or disgust? Well if your like me, you've done it more times than a Saxon's gotten intimate with his favorite goat.

Being of a pagan Celtic persona, this is an inappropriate exclamation. Obviously its more appropriate to call upon our own gods to express ourselves. So what is appropriate?

DAR CROM!

What you're actually saying is "By Crom". This is in reference to one of the more controversial of Celtic gods; Crom Cruach. Loosely translated, Crom means "bent" or "stooping", and Cruach means "hard".

Crom Cruach was supposedly worshiped by human sacrifices, and legend says that there was a golden idol carved in his image at Magh Slecht,. St. Patrick is said to have destroyed this idol.

Most people will recognize Crom as Conan the Barbarian's patron god. While some may feel a little silly because of this bear in mind that Robert E. Howard got his idea from the Celts, in fact the name Conan is actually an Irish name meaning "little hound".

By far the biggest obstacle in using this phrase is overcoming the calling upon you-know-who instinctively. Last Beltaine you may have heard me trying to correct myself mid-sentence and saying stuff like: "JESUS CHR....I mean ... DAR CROM !" I think at one point I even said "JESUS CROM". With practice I'm sure we'll all get the hang of it.

As a cultural note, when calling upon the gods, it is said that a Celt would use a descriptive nickname rather than the actual name of the god. This was to keep your enemies from learning the true names of your gods and preventing them from invoking your own gods against you.

Feast Gear

The bare minimum of table wear you should have for an event (be it indoors or a camp out) is a wooden bowl, a sharp knife, and a spoon. With these you can pretty much get through any feast with out too much of a hassle. You can eat with your knife in place of a fork. You can drink out of your bowl if you have to, and the spoon pretty much speaks for itself.

Of course no self-respecting Celt would be without a nice drinking horn. And though a bowl can replace it in many cases, a plate is often more desireable to eat off of.

Feast Gear

You are expected to bring your own feast gear to events. Should you forget, you may get lucky and find a member who has an extra mug or plate, but don't count on being lucky. And as a side note..... if you do borrow someone's gear it's common curtesy to return it clean.

And a note to all: We all know how groggy we get after a good feast and how easily distracted we get at our fun-filled events... but nothing is more unsightly than a heap of unwashed dishes strewn about camp....
claim it, clean it, and stow it.

Making Javelins for under $20

Making Javelins for competition by Rutager
from AOL message board, Jun 9, 1997

Pertaining to javelins

**INSTRUCTIONS FOR CONSTRUCTION**

• Step 01 - Purchase one or more "Ice chippers" (these come with shafts already attached).
• Step 02 - Decide on head shape (leaf, "arrow" etc.)
  Step 03 - Cut head to shape using Dremmel Moto Tool with grinder head (thats how we did it).
• Step 04 - Scare the shit out of the people who live around you by throwing your new javelin at all hours of the night.
• Step 05 - If you can not follow these simple steps and invest $20...I don't want to hear you crying about not haveing a javelin to prictice with.

Pennsic Independent and War Points

I noticed that the Pennsic Independent, the online home of the Pennsic news paper, is also running Drupal (the software that at least currently powers TdB). Therein I found an interview with King Konrad in which he discusses his decision to concede all war points to the Middle Kingdom at Pennsic 37 because they were outnumbered by 250 fighters. This was an unprecedented move and has been much discussed in SCA forums lately. The question being whether fighting at such a disadvantage makes it less fun for those who play on the field, and whether winning on the field should be held as more important than having a good time. I am torn on the subject myself since I think that pre-war Diplomacy is an integral part of the game, but to even up the sides at the war so that the battle is more fun also seems honorable to me.

Pennsic People Database

I noticed that Brogan had already put himself into the Pennsic People Database on Pennsic.net (the unofficial site for things Pennsic). I noticed that Brogan's entry points folks to the old AOL site, which, although still running has become very out of date, so I took the liberty of adding a page for the Tuatha de Bhriain group itself with a link to this site instead. The entry can be edited by any TdB member simply by guessing the cryptic password: 'It's primarily for this', though I think the entry is quite good enough to stand without need of editing.

I think the giant address book for Pennsic is a great idea - I wish I had thought of it! Note: this post has been set to be viewable only by TdB members and friends.

Pennsic Plan Sheet Blanks

Aonghus, in his infinite wisdom created a worksheet (in Excel) to assess difficulty and assign work fairly betwixt the attending members at Pennsic's past. The file contains essentially three different sheets of import:

• A Daily Jobs assignment sheet
• A list of attending members and their required tentage area
• A detailed setup and breakdown list

Aonghus included what he called a 'hassle factor' which weights the various tasks as to how much of a pain they are, in an attempt to "spread the pain" evenly as much as possible.

Attached you'll find two of the sheets listed above (a tent list doesn't really need a form), set up for printing in PDF. A summary of the Plan of the Day is also attached. For more detail, see the Clann Handbook

Attachment	Size
pennsicjobs-2008.pdf	36.31 KB
pennsicplan-2008.pdf	41.49 KB
PennsicPlanoftheDay.pdf	45.66 KB

Persona Development

The easiest way to establish your Celtic Persona is by working backwards. Find out what events shaped the present and work them into your history. Develop a lineage of your ancestors and highlight their heroic deeds. Feel free to work back as far as you like, the Celts are famous for their lineages and long lists of kings. Of course a model Celt will recite his lineage before going into battle.

Personas can range from a simple statement of who you are and what you do, to epic lists of battles and voyages and divine intervention. You will find the best persona stories to be somewhere in between. The history of Ireland, like most old world countries, begins with legendary saga, gradually fading into factual circumstance. Your persona story may likewise be written with your distant ancestors involved in the more fantastic and you yourself involved with the more down to earth and historic.

Bragging was a Celtic art form and appropriate for your blood line but it is considered poor taste to connect yourself with major historic or legendary figures (i.e. King Arthur, Julius Caesar, Attila the Hun, etc.) And please don’t brag of deeds that you couldn’t pull off in real life, you will only embarrass yourself and those around you. A persona is not a fantasy role playing character, it is you as you would have been if you were living in 5th century Ireland.

While developing your persona, you want to answer these basic questions:

• Who are you?
  
• What does your name mean?
  
• Who are you related to?
  
• What do you do?
  
• How did you learn your "profession"?
  
• What is going on around you?
  
• How does it affect you?
  
• Are you a Pagan or Christian?
  

One thing that you will want to consider is the cultural practice of fosterage amongst Celts. When children reached a certain age they would be sent to live with some other family to be taught a trade and/or domestic skills. Then, when reaching adulthood, they returned to their natural parents. Adulthood was considered 14 years old for girls and 17 for boys. Fosterage was meant to strengthen the bonds between families, sometimes even tribes, and the relationship between foster children was considered just as strong a bond as that between actual siblings. If you work fosterage into your Persona story, you should name your foster family as well. It should also be noted that in cases where clans were not so friendly with each other, the dominant clan would sometimes demand hostages from lesser clans to guarantee loyalty and peace between them. This experience would be similar to fosterage for a young person - just hope that your blood clan never breaks the peace or your libel to ceremoniously have your throat cut!

Probably the most difficult challenge you’ll face is choosing your name. Your name should be chosen wisely. Constantly switching your name will be a big hassle for both you and any acquaintances you’ve made. Pick a name consistent with your origins, a Gaelic Celt would not have a Japanese name, and stay away from "fantasy names" too. Also be warned: not all names in use today were in use in the 5th century. Some of the better baby naming books often state the meaning of a name as well as its historical origins. These types of books can prove invaluable in this endeavor. Believe it or not another excelent source of names is a Gaelic Dictionary. Some of the words you will find in there will have definitions like "one who.....", which may be a great name for you if it descibes you in action, spirit, or physically. Almost all names mean something. Nameing of things was once a very serious ritual and not as arbitrary as it usualy is today.

It was a common practice amongst many cultures to have both a childhood name and then given an adult name or nickname later in life to reflect an outstanding deed or personality trait (e.g. Cu Chullain’s original name was Setanta, read "The Boy Deeds of Cu Chullain" to find out why his name changed.) Just keep in mind that the best nicknames are given, not taken.

You would be wise to read member persona stories that are posted to get the flavor. All it takes is a little imagination to write yours, but should you get stuck, you should consult with the clann Fíle (or any member that has already written theirs). Entwining your story with those of other members is strongly encouraged, but you should get the permission of those members before starting and their approval before posting.

Sponsorship and Guests

As a member you may sponsor guests and probates. A guest can be someone interested in joining the clann or just curious about what we do. Probates are individuals who have expressed their desire to become a member and are currently in their trial period.

To sponsor a probate you must declare your intentions by calling for a majority vote at a clann meeting for the approval of elevating the person in question’s status to probate. On approval, this person is now a probate and you their sponsor.

As a probates sponsor, you should maintain regular contact and keep them posted of clan meetings and events. Take the time to acquaint them with each member. Be as vocal as possible in support of your probate. Encourage them to take part and be a visible presence at events.

A Sponsor is more than just a spokesperson for his or her probate. You will also be responsible for their "clan education" as well. You should be familiar with what is expected of a probate having gone through the process yourself, but you should read the becoming a member section frequently as well. Your probate will need a torc and appropriate persona story before they will be made a member. Encourage your probate to complete these projects regularly, it is solid evidence of their desire to be an active and contributing member.

As a sponsor, you are accountable for the actions of your guests and probate. You should sponsor with responsibility and forethought. Be mindful of who you are bringing to the clann. Make sure your guests understand what we are about and that they will be respectful.

Should a problem arise, it is your responsibility to see that the situation is resolved. Most problems are due to a misunderstanding or lack of communication and are easily solved by bridging the gap. Should you and your probate have trouble connecting, you should find another sponsor for them.

In the unlikely event that a probate doesn’t work out, it is your responsibility to inform that person and withdraw your sponsorship. As an alternative, you may want to consider making that person a Friend of the Clann instead. It would reflect very poorly on the group and be extremely unfair of a sponsor to lead a probate on, or of a member not to speedily inform a sponsor of a problem he might have with their probate.

The Hat, the Horn, & the God

There is an old tale told of the Horned God. When wanting to assemble the creatures of the forest together, he would take his mighty club and beat upon the belly of his companion stag. The stag would toss back its antlers, raise its proud head, and make a deep lowing that resounded throughout the forest. The creatures of the forests, minions of the Horned God, hearing this would assemble to hear the Gods bidding.

Our chieftain wears a hat made from antler and carries a bugle fashioned from cow horn - known as the "Horn of Assembly". Wearing the hat and sounding the horn, the chieftain takes on the role of the lowing stag, to call together the dispersed clan for a common purpose.

All clansfolk who hear the Horn of Assembly must heed its call.