Yes, it means renaissance faire and , it's popular in America. They're sort of generally focused around the historical period of 1500-1600 in Europe - England in particular although you can find "elves" some "vampires" and with the popularity of Pirates of the Caribbean, alot of pirates now as well as any American Renaissance faire. Some of them are medieval themed but you still wind up with an assortment of elves, vampires and pirates. There's also a smattering of bellydancers as well at any of these faires. It's kind of a big dress up party with folk music thrown in. Having no real castles of our own here in the USA, we're all a bit gaa-gaa over knights, castles, chivalry as well as the renaissance. You don't have to dress up to go - you do have to dress up to perform - the idea is that the faire goers feel like they are visting a different age. The Hurdy-gurdy really does add to the "back in time" atmosphere here even if no one is really clear what time we're trying to re-enact. ----- Original Message ----- From: Colin To: hg@hurdygurdy.com Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 6:19 PM Subject: Re: [HG] Ren (Wren) Fairy bird
I was wondering that as well. Am I right in assuming that Renn is short for Renaissance? (And that took Google to suggest it although it calls them "Ren Faires" http://www.renfaire.com/General/faire.html ). Not a phrase I have heard of in the UK.. Of course, we don't have to dress up for them here, we still walk around dressed like that - Forsooth! (Don't laugh, we went to a 200 year celebration in Looe in Cornwall in the 80's and got mistaken for part of it - and we were in our holiday clothes!). The olde worlde spelling is Fayre here, by the way. They sound like fun but then we have Morris Dancers all over the place - and Sword dancers as well (rapper sword, not the Scottish stuff). What period do they cover? Is it European or American (I presume European as I don't think the lute ever became big over there). Maybe that declaration should never have been signed :) Colin Hill ----- Original Message ----- From: Jon Redpath To: hg@hurdygurdy.com Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 10:31 PM Subject: [HG] Ren (Wren) Fairy bird This wren fairy bird, what is it? Is it some sort of brightly coloured brash sounding North amerikan bird. The only fairy birds I know of come from australia, and what has it got to do with Hurdy Gurdys? Or is some special indigenious type of hurdy gurdy in the North Amerikana. Please enlighten. JON ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Support the World Aids Awareness campaign this month with Yahoo! for Good
