Renaissance Leiderhosen

My family has attended the Maryland Renaissance Festival since the kids were small. I never cease to be amazed at the diversity of costumes in evidence. Not the players, they pay close attention to detail of the Henry VIII cycle. Each week Henry moves on to a different wife and the actor playing him magically grows older and fatter. The ladies are in full finery with long velvet skirts and lace headpieces. What draws your attention is what passes for Renaissance garb among the paying customers. Everything from eleventh century chain mail and Viking helmets complete with horns (which is actually Bronze Age) to seventeenth century pirate garb with stuffed parrot on the shoulder. And that’s just the men. The women dress like something out of Xena, Warrior Princess, with lots of leather and tattoos. Cleavage is everywhere. Something about Renaissance Festivals that brings out the bad girl in who would otherwise be a demure young lady. This past Saturday was German day, with lots of beer and oom-pah music. Pirates and Vikings mingled with leiderhosen and fake British accents mixed with fake German ones, sometimes in the same sentence.

“Nice leiderhosen, dude, where’d you get them?”
“Ebay.”
“Ebay? No way, dude.”
“Way, dude.”

Two young ladies wandered close to the White Hart Tavern, where beer flowed and patrons sang. They were in beer hall freulien costume, with short skirts, shorter aprons and white stockings--like the girl on the St. Polygirl beer bottle come to life. They stopped a stone’s throw from the stage and began primping. Each in turn stretched a shapely leg and slowly pulled up a stocking. Everyone within a radius of fifty yards and possessed of an XY chromosome and pulse turned to watch. One girl feigned surprise at the attention and giggled. She wiggled her butt and sauntered off to catch up with her friend.

Her admiring throng included the pipe band about to take the stage. One young drummer stood mouth agape, eyes bulging, and commented: “I think I just forgot all the music”. A piper, beard showing grey and crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes, laughed and said “Son, just think of it as pre-performance applause.” They took the stage and kicked into a bagpipe version of the Rock’n Roll classic “Angel in the Centerfold”. The drummer played fine, but I noticed he kept scanning the crowd.