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Types of heralds at SCA events |
| Updated: Mar 27, 2005 |
This is an article on site heralds, field heralds, list heralds, book heralds, court heralds, and what they do at SCA events. Though written for children, grown-ups can also find this article both useful and entertaining.
Good day, my lords and ladies!
My name in the Society is Yves (say it like "eve") and I'm a herald in the Kingdom of Meridies. I'm going to tell you about the types of heralds you might see at SCA events and some other neat stuff. The way I see it, there are five types:
1. Site heralds, 2. Field heralds, 3. List heralds,
4. Book heralds, and 5. Court heralds
Let's learn more about each type.
1. Site heralds
A site herald is someone who makes official, general announcements at an event.
"Official" means that the announcements are important and everyone should stop
talking so that everyone can hear the herald. "General" means the announcements
are for everyone. If you see someone - and I mean anyone - even if
it's a grown-up... if you see them talking while a herald is making an announcement, quietly
get their attention, look them right in the eye and put your finger over your lips to get them
to be quiet too. If they aren't quiet, go tell on them when the herald is done.
Site heralds are the people who do wake-up calls, and announce what's happening when - like
classes and fighting and court and feast. A site herald might announce other important things
like there's bad weather coming, or someone left their headlights on (which
means they might have a dead battery later and their car won't start up!). A site herald
could wear something special called a tabard to show that they are
on duty and represent the kingdom, or the SCA group doing the event, or the whole Society...
depending on how the tabard is decorated.
2. Field heralds
A field herald is someone who makes official announcements on the list field. Remember what I said about "official announcements"?
The "List" can mean more than one thing.
- The place where the tourney happens — ("We're going to the list field")
- The tourney itself — ("We're going to watch the list")
A "tourney" is just a group of fights. In a tourney, the fights are called bouts.
A "tournament" might be one tourney, or several tourneys.
The fights aren't for real (so the fighters aren't actually trying to KILL each other dead) and no one is supposed to get hurt too bad. The field herald makes different types of announcements: starting the tourney, calling fighters to the field, and leading the salutes before a bout. The field herald also announces which fighter won the bout - and when the tourney is over, who won the tourney. Field heralds also might wear tabards like site heralds do.
3. List heralds
A list herald is someone who schedules the bouts in a tourney and keeps track of who wins and loses. In tourneys with a bunch of fighters, the list heralds and field heralds stay pretty busy! Sometimes a list herald is called a "listkeeper" or a "master of the list" or a "mistress of the list".
4. Book heralds
A book herald at an event is usually someone who has some books on a table and is there to help people learn more about names and devices and badges.
"Devices" are the colorful designs that fighters put on their shields and people put on their banners.
"Badges" are a little like devices, but they're more like a name tag or
a label. Devices say "this is me" and badges say "this is mine". Names and
devices and badges can be specially registered through other book heralds - but grown-ups take
care of all this stuff, kids don't have to do that kind of homework.
In the Society, we choose a name for our persona — that's someone
we pretend to be like who could have been alive before about 1600. My name, Yves, is the name
of someone who could have lived in France, so I have a French persona. Other people have names
for their personas from other places like Spain, England, Ireland, Norway, Italy, Russia, Persia,
India, Japan, and more!
You could have fun learning more about these places in an encyclopedia or an atlas or a book on the history of that place. We can do more stuff for our personas to make them better like wearing the right clothes and not talking about everyday stuff (like computers and video games). Talking about is school is pretty OK becuase they had schools and colleges back then.
5. Court heralds
A court herald is the person who makes the official announcements during court. Before court, the court herald meets with the people holding the court (like a king and queen or a baron and baroness, but sometimes there's just one) and they write a checklist of things to do in court.
When everything's ready, the herald leads the court people to where everyone is, says "All rise!", then the court people walk in. After the court people are in place, the herald says "The populace may be seated" (or something similar to let people know they can sit back down).
The herald opens the court, the herald calls people to come up to the thrones, the herald reads award scrolls, and when everything is done, the herald closes court, says "All rise!" again, and walks out with the court people. The court herald has a lot to do and a lot to say.
A good court herald doesn't mind doing a lot of talking and announcing in front of everyone. Also, they can make announcements so that everyone can hear exactly what they say because they speak very carefully. Grown-ups call this e-nun-see-a-shun (which is actually spelled "enunciation").
Almost done
Just so you know, one person CAN be more than one type of herald. I've done all of the stuff that I just talked about.
So, that's my way of describing the different types of heralds you might see at events. I hope you had fun reading this.
If you're in Meridies and someone points me out to you and says "that's Yves" - it's OK to come up to me and say "good day, my lord". I'll say "good day" back and we can talk more about heralds or whatever you want.
Ready to learn more?
I have other articles on this site about what field heralds do, what list heralds do, what book heralds do, and what court heralds do — just in case you're interested.
Did you like my article? You can let me know — and here's how:
My nifty email form stopped working ... but you can still send me email if you would like to.
Original page posted: December 16, 1999. Last
tweaked: July 1, 2006.
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