In our first year in Meridies, we made the acquaintance of Volsungen Redebeard of Kimaden and his wife Esmeralda of Kimaden. Volsungen and Esmeralda were the founders of the Shire of Arenal. Volsungen told me of an "interesting" group of young men who resided in Arenal in its early days.
These young men were a group of about half a dozen high school students. Because of their antics, Volsungen and Esmeralda dubbed them, "The Baby Brigade." They ascribed three cries to the Baby Brigade and each one had a story.
Cry #1: "Don't laugh at me, I'm sick!"
Volsungen didn't go into a lot of detail on this one, evidently it was pretty disgusting. The outline of the incident is that at a persona party, one of the brigade members first got very drunk, then got very sick all over himself. This caused much merriment among his fellow brigade members and the cry was his response to their laughter.
Cry #2: "It's all right, I'm drunk!"
At a camping event, a member of the Baby Brigade made the acquaintance of a young lady who was not offering as much as the young man thought she was. After drinking with the rest of the brigade for a while, the young man boldly strolled into the lady’s tent. The young lady was sharing the tent with two other ladies and all three were in their chemises when the brigade member walked in on them. The young man was physically ejected from the tent and offered the second cry by way of apology.
Cry #3: "I have a car I can take."
Volsungen and Esmeralda were trying to organize car pooling to an Axemoor event and found that they had more passengers than drivers. When Esmeralda, who was seneschal, asked if there was anyone else who could drive, one of the Baby Brigade members said, "I have a car I can take." The young man meant “take” literally; he "borrowed" his grandfather's car without permission.
Volsungen and Esmeralda did not go to the event because Esmeralda's grandfather was deathly ill and they wanted to be home to receive any phone calls from her family. When the phone rang Saturday morning, Esmeralda answered it with a real dread.
The call was from the brigade member’s grandfather. He was furious and said he was holding them responsible for his grandson’s actions. He threatened to sue both Volsungen and Esmeralda and the Society. They managed to get the old gentleman calmed down and convinced him that they had no idea what the young man had intended to do when he said he could drive. This incident established the third cry of the Baby Brigade.
Several years after Lord Volsungen had told me these stories, five high school boys joined the Canton of Seleone. Mommy Isolde resolved to have no Baby Brigade in our canton and saw to it that they were on their best behavior. At their first event, an Axe- moor Yule feast and Revel, the boys behaved so well that several gentles, among them Duke Caridoc of the Bow commented on it. Isolde and I decided that these guys were definitely not a Baby Brigade and christened them, "The Children's Crusade."