How To Be A Celt Or Just Look Like One

After Pennsic, a rather unusual coincidence occurred. My grandmother gave me an old book on Irish history "The Story of the Irish Race" by Seamus McMamus. Though it was written in 1910 and some of the information a bit dated, it was an excellent book to get started with. I sort of took it upon myself to be the group historian and sought to re-structure the clann to be more historically accurate. The first clann event we held was known as "Ben Bhriain" ("the mountain of Brian"…really mink hollow in the Catskills). The event was a hike up a mountain and a camp out (I almost didn’t make it). At this event I was officially made clann Fili (poet/historian… though I was still only a probate) and a some changes were made in the laws of the clann which got the ball rolling. New probates were also made at this event, Cian, Otto, & I think Conn (who had been in the clann once before but quit for some reason). We settled on a time period: 5th century AD, because it was a volatile time in Irish history and allowed for both Pagan and Christian personas, as well as a wide variety of other "barbarian" types. We also disassociated ourselves from Brian Boru (Unless you consider that we might be his ancestors). By far, the most monumental decision at the event was to officially proclaim Falgon as chieftain. Trelvis became the Druid and Máinlia became Bard.

Aside from Ben Bhriain, the primary reason for the clann’s existence was Pennsic and to a much lesser degree, War of the Roses (War of the Roses is held in upstate NY and used to be a mini Pennsic but has gone down hill in popularity). Back then we didn’t hold our own events. We also were not to keen on going to other SCA events for various reasons (we didn’t even know that we had a local SCA and besides, we were(or are rather) all pretty young and loved to drink, howl at the moon, and acted pretty barbaric compared to the "polite" society of the SCA). We had also become good friends with our Pennsic neighbors and started trucking upstate and attending Norseland events.