Strike the nakers. Pluck the psaltery. Strum the chordal
dulcimer. The Middle Ages are alive and well at Spring Garden Elementary School in Hampstead.
The fourth grade will present "This Merry Company," a musical Middle Ages celebration. True to the medieval celebration of the end of shortened days in the year, the festival will take place Monday at 10 a.m. and Dec. 14 at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. at the school on Boxwood Drive.
You won't want to miss this Middle Ages variety show, a collection of Moorish dances, juggling, poetry reading, singing authentic wassails and playing melodies on replicas of period instruments, knights in armor, a mummers (masked) play of St. George slaying the dragon, children dressed as pigs, a sword dance, gymnasts, mimes and more.
The audience will be asked to participate.
"It's to be as if you are a guest of the King and Queen," said Ida Lea Rubin, who teaches vocal music at Spring Garden Elementary.
JTC Mrs. Rubin worked from the extensive collection of Middle Ages music, dance, theater and song produced by Oxford University Press called, "This Merry Company" by Alison and Michael Bagenal. Her theme for a midwinter musical celebration has spread throughout curricula in the school.
In recent weeks, enthusiasm about the Middle Ages in history, language, writing and presentation studies spread from the fourth-grade classrooms into enriched study in the art room, the music room, and into the hands and imaginations of dozens of parents.
Art students have created ceramic dragons, painted exquisite miniature landscapes, and burnished aluminum foil over their fabricated family crests for heraldic shields.
They have begun an enormous castle of painted boxes, and a 4-foot bas relief dragon of papier mache and iridescent wings is being built.
A reading of "The Castle in the Attic" by Elizabeth Winthrop led to a study of armor by Carol Burkhouse's students. That led to examination of present-day armor, from space suits to motorcycle helmets for conceptual reading, writing and a presentation.
Mrs. Burkhouse and fellow fourth-grade teacher Elizabeth Seletzky lent writing talents to a skit that has been adapted from a popular children's story of a lovesick dragon, to be performed in next week's production.
Middle Ages fever has inspired dozens of parents, who have spent recent weeks stitching styles of the past for fourth-graders.
"This is no easy thing, to get costumes ready for six classes. And every child has something special to do," said Mrs. Rubin.
Nearly 200 students will be in the school production.
Backstage, amid boxes and closets stuffed with colorful costumes, yellow silk turbans topped with red feathers await the youngsters.
Knights' helmets and gauntlets will match the shields displaying heraldic crests fabricated by students in the art room.
There's a purple silk robe bejeweled with glitter and collared in fur. There's the cone-shaped damsel hat with gossamer train.
"You cannot believe the stuff these parents have done," Mrs. Rubin said. "For the dragon, I suggested something made from boxes. It's a good thing they don't listen to me -- these parents go on and on and create something fabulous."
Essential to the production, the music is authentic from the Middle Ages and Renaissance. This music of so long ago is strangely familiar. Many current hymns and Christmas carols have their origin in the street music of archaic times.
"We're doing all authentic music from the Middle Ages and Renaissance, from about the 12th through 15th centuries," Mrs. Rubin said.
For the instrumental accompaniment, parents with woodworking skills constructed instruments used by street musicians during the festivals of medieval times.
The Spring Garden ensemble of early instruments in student hands has been dubbed, "Ensemble Le Jardin du Printemps." Included with the early instruments will be beginning cello and violin students supplying the essential sound of bagpipes and drone. Vocal music teacher Mary Smaligo will be harpist, through a keyboard synthesizer.
In addition to instruments and music, authentic dances will be shown, from a garland dance, a pole dance celebrating apple harvest, to a Morris sword dance, rooted in Moorish tradition and still popular today in the guise of country line dancing.
"We've done big productions before," Mrs. Rubin said. "This one has been growing. . . . For this one, you absolutely cannot believe the amount of parent involvement. It's incredible. We cannot thank them enough."