The Hall of Memory for the Barony of Bryn Madoc

As a tapestry is woven of many threads, so Bryn Madoc is composed of many lives.  Some sojourned here but briefly, and are lost to memory, while others are renowned throughout the kingdom for deeds in court or on the field of battle.  Some of her folk spent a moment to aid the barony, and others gave great stores of their strength, their spark, and their wisdom to shape her.  Most who claimed Madoc’s Hill as their home have wandered wherever the winds of change have sent them.  A few have crossed to the western shore from which there is no returning.  Yet through it all, Bryn Madoc has remained, every bit a character in our play as are the barons and gentles who populate her.  She is a persona apart from any of us, yet by thought and action, each of us may increase or diminish her.

– from the preface to the Chronicle of Bryn Madoc.

What is this page?
The Society for Creative Anachronism has grown and changed dramatically since the first gathering in a back yard in 1966.  Bryn Madoc traces it’s beginning to five like-minded UGA students in the mid 1970s. 

Some two decades since I joined in 1987, I looked back in wonder at the changes during my own tenure.  The organization has reached a kind of maturity, where the founders have retired, passed away or otherwise left the helm of the SCA.  Some of the legendary names, renowned for their chivalry, wisdom, or humor, once familiar in our mouths as household words*, are now unmarked and unsung by the young faces I now see making their own marks in the SCA.  Deeds done and decisions made which, for good or ill, changed the way we play this game, are unknown by many who now steer the barony (or for that matter, the kingdom).  In short, this organization, which has grown and evolved longer than the working lives of many of its members, has little in the way of an institutional memory.   I hope that projects such as this web page will increase interest in the newer folk to learn more about the group they play in, and inspire those who have wandered long on SCA’s road to look back and tell their fellows what they see.

--Thegn Dyfn ap Meurig y Pencerdd,

Seated Bard of Bryn Madoc

*see what I did there?  Borrowed from ‘The Bard.’