Revel’s Medieval Festival

At the end of September 2016, our village organized a medieval festival as a get together. This small (about 2000 inhabitants) mountain village is divided into hamlets (neighborhoods). Ours is called "Le Bourg", my parents’ is "La Bourgeat". There’s also "Le Sauzet", "Les Contamines", "Le Galapant", "Les Cornets", "Les Molettes", "Les Geymonds", "La Tour" etc.

Every two to four years a local association called "Cneuf" organizes an event where all these hamlets come together and compete for a trophy. The theme changes every time. Each hamlet is supposed to organize a parade with costumes, dances and music and we compete in several games. This year the theme was "medieval festival".

Our hamlet picked the title "Les troubadours du Bourg" because of all the musicians we have among us. A neighbor and I spent many hours sewing tunics for our participants. Some of our neighbors wrote a song. We had a customized banner and a shield, we decorated our base/fort and chose a knight and a princess for our group. It took a lot of planning but it helped us all get better acquainted.

The "Troubadours du Bourg" in front of their fort. Joshua the proud banner carrier.

Our parade: we fancified it with a horse. It was fun, festive and low-key as one would expect from troubadours.

Joshua, best archer in the kingdom of Revel

Other hamlets had incredible costumes and choreographies. This one was my favorite:

Getting creative with the theme: elves, Gandalf, Gollum, and an army of dark knights doing the haka!

There was a lot of dancing: the hamlet "Les Contamines" also got creative and picked the title "Les contaminés (the contaminated)". They dressed as lepers and danced to Mickael Jackson’s Thriller song. When the Lord of the Rings hamlet started playing the same song after their parade, the contaminated joined them, and eventually the entire village joined the fun.

The climax of the event was this gigantic dragon built by one of the hamlets:

It had motorized wings that could flap, a neck that could bend up and down, a mouth that could open and close and it breathed smoke!

After each hamlet paraded in front of the king, the competition started.

A joust battle between our knight and another hamlets’

Josh is sentenced to the pillory (voluntarily)

Josh helped us win a lot of points with his aiming skills !

All in all I think half the population of the village attended that event. It was very popular and every one had a ton of fun. As a first-time participant I was seriously impressed. I didn’t know our village housed such talented people. A local news channel covered the event. How exciting seeing our little village on the news a few days later !