“Wahoo, I’ve Got A Sword!”

Following The Shire into battle

We ride south at dawn. Hours later, the sun is high, and we step onto the field to a bugle sounding out, the clash of metal, the distant clop of hooves. Tall figures brush past me in surcoats and helmets, barking orders to squires carrying spears and polearms over their shoulders. My guide kneels, and her comrades assist her in pulling on her chainmail. 

At this point, you might be wondering if I’ve accidentally pasted the opener to a ‘romantasy’ novel. I wouldn’t blame you — but this is no fiction. This is Big Battle, an annual gathering of some of Scotland’s most avid medieval combat re-enactors. St Andrews’ own Shire of Caer Caledon is in attendance, and I accompany them for the day. 

The Shire is a re-enactment society that has been around for several decades, in various incarnations. The current society is composed of several ‘guilds’, each specialising in a craft from way, way back when. Bardism, leatherwork, meadmaking — their weekly schedule reads like a biography of a fourteenth-century peasant. 

The Fighters Guild, a section of the society dedicated to training members in period-accurate combat,  is a major focal point for the society. Scotia McDonald, training officer and Shire member since 2010, takes me down to the Military Museum of Scotland where the battle is taking place.

“Generally, very few people turn up and immediately say, ‘Wahoo, I’ve got a sword! I’m going to menace people with it, horrifyingly!’” McDonald says. “You have to coax people into it. No, you’re fine, you’re not going to hurt anyone, we’ll show you how we do this in a way that’s safe, fun, and creates a good show.”

She gives me the names of the other re-enactment groups in attendance — if you’re thinking ‘The Shire of Caer Caledon’ is dramatic enough, wait till you hear about Regia Angelorum, the Knights of Monymusk, Britannia XIV, and the Company of St Margaret. 

On the day of combat, each group shows up early — armed and ready. I felt oddly out of time standing at the side of the battlefield, fiddling with my phone in front of fighters in authentic medieval armour. I had to be assured several times the swords weren’t actually capable of lopping a head off.

Despite my sniffiness, Secretary Amitabh Bharghavan and long-time member Rosie Cromwell are all smiles as they set up their armour. “The kit’s pretty comfortable. It’s heavy, but it’s fitted,” Bharghavan says. “Chainmail is the heaviest thing in the world to lift, and then you put it on, and it’s fine,” Cromwell adds. She’s held many committee positions during her time in the Shire, and came back to the society after her graduation. “It takes over your life.” 

Throughout the day, a lot is going on at any given time: a child dressed as a monk is taught to shoot a bow, groups practice a spear formation but mix up their left and right and end a clattering mess. One especially intriguing game was called ‘Circle of Treachery’, where people in chainmail sneak up on each other with big pointy spears to poke their foes. 

According to Chris Coutts, Training Officer and Leader of the Knights of Monymusk, there’s been some big changes in the Scottish re-enactment scene in the last decade. These large-scale collaborative events have only come back into fashion in the last couple of years, as tensions built between groups around the time of the 2014 Scottish independence referendum, where differences of opinion led to fights, ironically, becoming unsafe for combatants.

But Coutts says bringing back events like Big Battle has been invaluable. “We all train on our own with our own groups in our own time, but to work with each other at events like this? It enriches everything.” He also is a big advocate of students making re-enactment their own:  “If you have too many old bastards like us hanging around in charge, it stops being a student thing. We’re here to help, but they remain at the core of things.”

Big Battle is one of the opening events of the re-enactment season, which lasts all summer. It’s definitely a spectacle: from fast-paced combat drills to practising drills with horse trainers responsible for the equestrian combat sequences of the 2023 Napoleon film. But for most re-enactors, Big Battle is just the warm-up, McDonald says. “People get one good crack to get themselves sorted, to literally scrape the rust out, de-mothball, discover where the holes are in your kit, what’s shrunk, that sort of thing, before the season gets into full swing.”

Could the Middle Ages come to St Andrews? “I could see The Shire hosting Big Battle next year,” McDonald tells me, her excitement apparent. “Us training officers serve at the pleasure of the committee, but I think we could at least lean on them a bit [and] they’ll see it’s a good idea.”

So, why get involved with medieval re-enactment as a university student? “It’ll pull you in,” McDonald says. Her summary of the combat experience sums things up quite well.

“Oh, we’re gonna fight now? Okay, we’re doing it, aaaaaand now I’m dead. Gonna lie on the ground for a few minutes, that was fun.”

Illustration by Magdalena Yiacoumi