Silver Brooch for Cezillia Raposa

And so she navigated to our shore, 

Fair winds had brought her safely to the East,

She’d carried brushes, paints and clever lore,

With Winston, truest friend and feline beast.

Then once she’d found a land with opened doors,

She made, for friends and Kings, her art into a feast.

This is the land for which she’d ever longed;

The sweetness of a home where she belonged.

Thus, at the Sixth Ethereal Court of the Eastern Consuls of the East, Tindal and Alberic, do induct Cezilia Raposa into our Order of the Silver Brooch.  

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This is a scroll text for one of my dearest friends, Cezillia Raposa.  The scroll was illuminated by Mistress Nataliia and the caligraphy was by Baroness Faeillin, who has since become the Signet of all the Eastern Scribes (a kingdom level job).  This was a fun scroll for us to collaborate on, because Cezillia, Nataliia and I have worked together for other ...er...  victims.. in the past, and Nataliia also used to be the Signet, so there was a lovely symmetry in the creation of this one.  

Cezillia has a Portugese, Jewish persona. She is also interested in researching the Jewish peoples of Goa, India, or at the very least, wearing saris at Pennsic when it is too hot to wear anything else.

Shortly before this scroll was awarded, Cezillia lost her best friend of 20+ years, her cat, Winston. Winston was an Isreali cat, but he immigrated with Cezillia back to the East Kingdom. Also, the previous year, Cezillia, Nataliia and myself had been in Portugal, drinking a lot of wine and port and generally making a nusiance of ourselves. But Portugal is where I first learned of the poet Luís de Camões, an in SCA period sailor and poet who visited India, and in fact, Goa on his journey. Considered the Shakespeare of Portugal, I was entranced when I started reading him.

This scroll text based on Canto X, Stanza 144 of Luís de Camões' Os Lusidas,  the Stanza where, after a long journey, de Gama’s expedition sights Portugese land and enters at the mouth of the River Tagus. IE it is the verse about coming home.  

Camões in Goa:  http://landegwhite.com/books-translations/camoes-made-in-goa/

Verse form Ottava Rima  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottava_rima 

The ottava rima stanza in English consists of eight iambic lines, usually iambic pentameters. Each stanza consists of three alternaterhymes and one double rhyme, following the ABABABCC rhyme scheme. So in this case:

A: Rhymes with Shore

B: Rhymes with East

C Rhymes with Longed.