It’s all in the game: A Bolton woman’s hobby helps recreate life in the Middle Ages

Cassandra Boell has lived in Bolton for 14 years, with her husband, Axel Anderson Sr., and their two sons. Like many Bolton moms she been actively involved in the lives of her children, serving for two years as cub master of Pack 37 when the boys were in Cub Scouts, and now serving as a committee member of her sons’ Boy Scout troop. Her husband serves as assistant scout master. Like many Bolton moms Boell likes cultivating other interests as well, including the artistic skills that earned her a bachelor’s degree in fine arts from the Massachusetts College of Fine Arts. For several years Boell has designed the award-winning Bolton Fair posters and covers to the fair’s premium booklets, and last year taught the basics of oil painting to middle school students in last year’s “We Explore” program at Florence Sawyer School. Unlike most other Bolton moms however, she is also an active participant in activities of the Kingdom of the East, one of the 19 kingdoms that make up the Society for Creative Anachronism, Inc., an organization dedicated to researching and recreating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe.

“What attracted me first was the costumes,” she said. A native of Lexington, she had considered becoming involved with Revolutionary War re-enactors, but the women’s costumes weren’t as sophisticated or appealing.

“When I found out about the SCA I thought, ‘that looks like fun. Those are pretty dresses.’”

Boell sews, and makes all her own costumes, although she said most people don’t do that any more.

The Society for Creative Anachronism has been around for 40 years, starting in California as a theme party put on by a group of science fiction and fantasy fans. The group grew into a serious medieval re-enactment group, similar to Civil War and Revolutionary War groups. However, the SCA goes beyond re-enacting historic battles, striving to recreate life as it might have been in the European Middle Ages, defined as the time period from 400 to 1600 AD.

There is a highly organized structure to the group, which is modeled on the feudal system of the time. Each kingdom has a king and queen, a prince and princess who are heirs to the throne, and a council who handle the day-to-day business of running the kingdom. Each kingdom is made up of baronies and shires. And there are kingdoms all over the world, comprising the SCA’s 30,000 members. The Central Mass. SCA group is designated as the Shire of Quintavia, part of the East Kingdom. To the east of Interstate 495 lies the Barony of Carolingia.

Boell said that, although war re-enactment is not the primary focus of the group, it is part of what the group does. The biggest gathering they have, she said, is the Pennsic War, held in Pennsylvania. The two-week event is attended by about 12,000 people.

“It’s a lot of fun,” said Boell. “Everyone comes to camp with varying degrees of authenticity.” She said that participants have to “at least make an attempt at medieval clothing.”

According to Boell, gatherings like the Pennsic War draw “merchants [from] all over selling their wares,” everything from medieval art supplies to writing implements, wax tablets, fabric and jewelry. She said there are also classes in medieval crafts at the event, as well as tournament fighting, archery, and dance re-creations.

The SCA encourages group members to find areas of European medieval society that interest them and learn all they can about them, emphasizing active participation in the learning process. People interested in jousting might learn not only about the protocol of a joust, but also about making armor and weapons. People interested in tarrying at the tavern might learn how to make meads and beers.

Boell, who became interested in hobby farming after moving to Bolton, learned how to butcher small animals for food (such as chickens and rabbits), and teaches the skill at small workshops held about twice a year for both SCA members and interested town residents.

She said that people in town would ask her what to do with extra roosters.

She said her own farmlet started with a chicken, a rooster, two geese and two ducks.

“The rooster started attacking our son when he was one, so the rooster had to go,” said Boell.

She got a government pamphlet on slaughtering animals, and taught herself how to do it.

“I’ve been a biology student and have worked in a lab with mice. Sometimes you have to put animals down,” she said. “It wasn’t hard going from a mouse to a chicken.”

Later she learned how to process rabbits, after having a couple of “accident batches” — non-purebred animals that couldn’t be sold.

“I have no idea how they did it in the Middle Ages,” she said, “but it probably wasn’t very different. It’s hard to know how they actually did it.”

Boell said that SCA members come to the workshops more often than people in town. They are interested in learning such things as where their meat comes from, what the differences are between breeds, and how processing a goose might differ from processing a chicken. Like other SCA members, she has researched her craft, studying how foods were prepared in the Middle Ages, and does some medieval cooking herself.

“They ate a lot of pork,” she said, “and they ate many more geese than we do now. On occasion you find references to animals in [old] cookbooks. One French recipe we found was for goose — and all its parts.”

“You can find the history for when monasteries used to raise them in cages,” she said. “The Romans raised them in big rabbitries — large areas enclosed by stone walls.”

Boell said that all parts of an animal were used in the Middle Ages. She said she found a book about the military describing how goose feathers were used to fletch arrows, and discovered that early powder puffs were tufts of goose skin with the down still on it. Quills were used to make pens, which Boell said she has done before. She said it is surmised that rabbit skins were stretched and dried and used as vellum, a fine parchment used for writing.

Boell said that, in addition to holding the workshops on processing animals, she occasionally organizes events for the SCA. She is helping to organize an upcoming event being hosted by the Barony of Carolingia in Cambridge. The March event will feature a 17th-century masque, or play, originally commissioned by Queen Anne in 1604. The masque will be preceded by a buffet, and will end with dancing, Middle Ages-style.

Although organizing an event like this can be a time-consuming proposition, Boell said she actually spends very little time on the SCA at the moment.

“It doesn’t get as much time as real life,” she said. “It’s like any other hobby. It depends on other demands in your life, and how much time you have available. The people who run the Pennsic War — for six months, that’s all they do. You can spend as little or as much time as you want.”

Boell’s accomplishments in teaching other medievalists how to process small animals earned her an SCA arts and sciences service award, one of several service awards she’s earned. She said she founded a startup SCA group in the western part of the state years ago, and when it became a barony she was presented with a small crown she could wear to all the SCA special events.

For more information on the Society for Creative Anachronism visit the Web at www.sca.org.