Burly men at sea coop12/7/2022 ![]() “It’s an entirely different experience in costume. “People enjoy dressing up,” says Tracy Dallas Lummus, who’s sporting a Louis XIV tunic known as a tabard. Like some daytime version of Halloween, or a kid’s fairy tale dream come true, this is a collection of characters straight out of Dungeons & Dragons, Braveheart, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Robin Hood, Cinderella, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Sword and the Stone-all participating in something like a real carnival of the Middle Ages, when peasants dined and danced like kings. We’ve created our own world.”Īnd what a fantastic and fantastical world it is. “It’s a chance to come and let go and have a great time. “It’s a chance to step back in time,” says this man, this Captain of the Queen’s Royal Guard, Lord Seymour Thanue (aka Matthew Harlow of Myrtle Beach). Instead, this is his way of getting me to play-to participate in this imaginative realm of make-believe. At Renaissance fairs like this, it’s quite fun to use 50 words when you only need five, as when I later hear a purple fairy ask, “May I capture your essence on my fairybox?” (“Can I take your picture?”). He wasn’t in search of a literal answer, per se. Sensing my confusion-I’m only wearing jeans and a T-shirt, after all-he translates: “What time is it?” I’m just through the gates and into Shadow Bay when a bearded gentleman in a tunic pardons my interruption to ask, “Good sir, how stands the hour?” ![]() ![]() Some come to recreate the historical, some the storybook, and some the fantastic realm in between. It is a question not uniformly answered by the more than 2,700 guests, entertainers, and “playtrons”-those patrons who play along, don the garb, talk the talk-arriving at the fifth annual Mythical & Medieval Fest in Shadow Bay (aka the RH Acres venue in Socastee). “Welcome to Shadow Bay!” Sir Kerrigan, The Lord High Sheriff and Queen’s Escort, bellows in an English accent. A ring of fairy children solemnly swears to defend the queen. ![]() A hooded archer shoots an arrow into the bull’s eye on a hay bale. A blacksmith hammers a steel knife on a forge. Wizards and elves wander into a tavern where plume-hatted wenches sing bawdy sea shanties. A troupe of belly-dancers twirls in coin-belted pantaloons. A black-bearded pirate shows off four silver dollars and his black powder pistol. Two knights in chain mail armor clash on the battlefield, their longswords clanking. ![]()
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