RECREATING AUTHURIAN LEGENDS

Mel Carnahan may have just been re-elected Governor of Missouri but does he know of King Eringlen?

It is unlikely since Eringlen and his barons, dukes, vassals, serfs, foot soldiers and princesses spend a good portion of their time in the world of the romanticized Middle Ages (See photo, Page 8A).

"Everyone has a love of King Arthur and the maiden and everybody had those stories when they were little," Megwyn Sanders, president of the Southeast Missouri Chapter of the Society for Creative Anachronism, said Sunday at a Renaissance gathering on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University.

"All we're doing is recreating the positive aspects. We just kind of passed by the plague and that thing about no bathing."

Dressed in frocks and cloaks, chain mail and leather jerkins, the approximately 15 members of the SCA met near the university's resident dorms for a small display of military skill and ancient lore.

"An anachronism is something that's out of place in time, like a clock on a caveman's wall," Sanders said. "That's what we are, we're out of place and time because we're the Middle Ages right now."

The gathering was held in part to have fun and to appeal to new members. The SEMO chapter of the SCA is included in the Calontir realm of King Eringlen, who presides over an area from Columbia to Cape Girardeau. The group meets Wednesday nights at the University Center for business planning and dances.

The King's representative, Baron Fernando Rodgriquez de Falcon, also known as Fernando Vigil of St. Louis, was on hand to demonstrate his skill with battle axe and broadsword.

"I was told that the local chapter needed some help in recruiting so I came down," Vigil said. A historian, Vigil said the SCA's fight reinactments follow the same lines as the training of fighting men in the Middle Ages. "It's a form of full combat martial arts. They might have been more aggressive in the Middle Ages with trying to knock you down but there was a little more at stake then.

"Now we might get beaten in a fight, get up and fight again in five minutes."

Tony Will of Sikeston, who goes by the name Lord Anthun at these gatherings, said he took up swordplay because it was the only sport he could do.

"It was the only one that I didn't look silly trying to do," Will said. "It's too easy to miss a racquetball but it's not that easy to miss a 6-foot-tall guy in armor."