Tournaments Illuminated
Spring 1986, AS XXI,
No. 78

Clove Lemon: The True Story by Alexandre sur le Mer

The clove lemon is truly one of the more pleasant customs of the Society. Icebreaker, instigator of romance, reward for deeds done, means of introduction: the clove lemon is all of these and more. However, no one ever questions whence came this item. Didn't you ever wonder how the SCA aquired such a grand habit? Read on, gentle reader, and I will reveal all to you. Amatory osculation was no stranger to the peoples of the Middle Ages. The Vikings had a game which was played at festivals by their adolescents; it featured a curved wand. The girl would throw the wand to a boy of her choice and then run from the hall. He pursued, and was rewarded with a kiss if he caught her. The Germanic tribes at wedding baked beans into cakes served to guests, one bean in the men's cakes and one in the womens's. The lucky pair who found the beans in their portions were declared to be `married' for the day, with all the privileges (up to a point!) that this implies; the idea being to confuse any evil spirits who might be watching, as to which was the married couple. The French had a custom, probably imported to the Normans, of attaching small bells to a pine branch. This branch would be waved in front of a woman by a man, who, having used the bells to get the hall's attention, would on the spot compose poetry praising the woman's grace and beauty. (I presume that the quality of the kiss varied directly with the quality of the poetry.) And we all are familiar the Druidic custom of hanging mistletoe and kissing any of the opposite sex who pass under it. What has all this to do with our clove lemon? You'll soon see. The time: AS VIII. The place: the Canton of the Towers in the Barony of Carolingia of the East Kingdom (Boston, Massachusetts). The occasion: a small Christmas revel autocratted by Alizaunde de Breguef. Attendance: approximately 30 (the numbers vary depending on which survivor you talk to, and the records are lost in the infinite corridors of time). As this event was to be Alizaunde's last before being ordered to Japan by the Army, she wished to make it a memorable one. She had researched all of the social-type Christmas and festival customs seeking a medieval answer to Spin the Bottle, and was pleased with none of them. The chasing game would be to noisy; the mistletoe had been done to death; and the German beans-in- the-cakes ritual was simply unsuitable. The pine-branch-and-bells game had it's good points, she felt; but on second thought Alizaunde decided that the creation of good extemporaneous poetry was something beyond the reach of the average SCAdian gentleman. Then she found another custom. This one was French, from the time of the Crusades. A knight who wished to make it plain to a maid he was courting that his intentions were serious would create a pomander for her by studding a citrus fruit, usually a lemon, with whole cloves. This was much more costly than it sounds, for at the time the only citrus in Europe came from the Holy Land by ship; and the cloves were worth literally their weight in gold due to their scarcity. As you may guess, this was a gift which was neither given nor accepted lightly. Alizaunde felt that this custom, slightly modified, had definite possibilities. She prepared a lemon for her event. At the revel, Alizaunde explained how the custom was to work. For anyone who has been imprisoned for ransom in the dungeon their entire SCA career, I will explain. The person who has the clove lemon selects a person of the opposite sex and presents it to him/her. The recipient removes a clove from the lemon, bites the clove (this sweetens the breath), and then kisses the giver for as long and in what ever way the recipient chooses. The recipient then takes the lemon, finds a person of the opposite sex, and so on. Following this explanation, she sang the following bit of doggerel: "Clove lemon, clove lemon, who's got it?" "Who cares?" "Whoever has it, kisses whomever they want to..." "That's different!" She then threw out the first-ever lemon to the throng, and the fun began.