“I have wondered lately about how gay medieval pageantry is. Do we have the wrong idea about what it was? How does the lady and her colors fit in to the Arуan experience?”
-Lynn, editorial call
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Lynn, like everything else we think we understand about the past in this land of lies, we have been fed only a portion in order to warp our understanding.
First, gay has been co-opted by homos. It used to just mean bright, declarative joy, a celebration, perhaps of victory. In Feudal Europe, every man of the foremost fighting type was a nation to himself and he must have colors. Just as gangs have colors and nations have flags, the medieval knight had a coat of arms so he could be identified from afar. An entire class of heralds existed to work as graves registration experts identifying the dead.
Indeed, due to the visors worn in late middle ages warfare by knights and their men-at-arms, our military men yet mimic the lifting of a visor to show one’s face to a friend, ally or leader, when they salute, lifting a visor that has not been there for hundreds of years.
Due to modern recreations and movies, we think that tourneys, which today are mostly grappling contests ancillary to the MMA fraternity, consist of jousting and pageantry. [1] This has been retained because it is the most graphic example of the Arуan warrior working in concord with his wife, a hold over from William Wallace’s wife dying defending his tower from enemies, ultimately tracing back to Scythian and Kurgan women supplying remounts for their men in chariot battle.
The idea of nations being mothers of races, of ships being female, of banners being used for signaling and unit identity, banners that are made with the woman’s craft, these deep ravines in the inner contour of the mass mind are currently hijacked by Football—predominantly college—and baseball with the banners and music, for the main guilt cult of Negroidolatry. School marching bands are military vestiges from the gunpowder era of warfare, as is the majorette’s baton, which used to be intended for the beating of conscript soldiers to make them stand up and be shot.
The war strands that come down to us through the more graphic virility signaling in banners, anthems, half-time song and dance, cheer leading and uniforms are echoes of old war practices. Note that the uniforms of ball teams tend to be extremely bright and gaudy, in contrast to the modern soldier’s war uniform which has a minimal visual signature since the advent of long range firearms that have turned war back into a manhunt.
War was often seen as a place to do things other than kill. For instance, during the battle of Little Bighorn, the aptly named Crazy Horse, who was said to have blue eyes, challenged a rival war chief to ride in among the horse soldiers and do bravery stunts that had no military application. This action, during a battle of extermination, was a type of behavioral lateral pageantry.
As for the actual medieval tourney, we have preserved only the aspects that involved female sponsors. There used to be battles with blunt weapons where men could really be maimed and killed and even captured and ransomed. There were duels in fenced enclosures with swords, war hammers and even pole axes. There was plenty of brutal, muddy combat in such tourneys. This has been brought back with armored team fights with blunt steel weapons. I have seen a dozen or so of these on video and have noted that the Polish and Russian teams tend to win.
Rodeos keep alive some aspects of this pageantry with the use of flags by rider, an exciting spectacle. The flag was an important military signal device up until WWII. In medieval Japan the practice went so far as to make soldiers into living moving flags by placing fin-like flags upon their backs to facilitate communication and the general’s observation.
Other aspects that are ancillary to the medieval pageant would include contests and games of chance among the lower orders: such as wrestling, stick fighting [in England with whale ribs], dueling with sharps and shields, where the term “swashbuckler” came from, and eventually to evolve into boxing.
Finally, as boxing took center stage as the last vestige of masculine contests in the sissy merchant world, the descendant of the knight, now a gentleman and perhaps an officer and/or a duelist with sword or pistol, would sponsor his footman or coachman or some tough working fellow, to engage on his behalf. The merchant economy displaced these rural working men to become urban boxers and set their aristocratic sponsors on the social margins with their inferiors. These lawbreakers of the old money and the new poor, were known as “The Fancy.” I wonder if the tribal American term “fancy dance” for a traditional fast-stepping dancer in old time regalia, is related to this.
By the mid 1800s in America, boxers were contending with colors, often gang colors, tied to their breaches. This form of pageantry is alive to this day with the gaudy trunks and boot uppers among some boxers and the outlandish Uncle Sam outfit that Tyson Fury wore in a title match with “the Bronze Bomber.” This too, the fight name, is a residual form of pageantry related, ultimately to the grimly gaudy Roman Triumph and the modestly adorned garland of the the victor in ancient Pan-Hellenic Agons.
Perhaps the best overall analogue to the medieval tourney would be if we combined a college bowl parade and football game, with a heavyweight championship fight, both ring and gridiron set in the infield of a NASCAR track, that instead of being used for a race, first hosted the parade and then served as the scene of a smash-up derby contest.
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Notes
-1. The most common tourney in Post Modern America is the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu tournament.
