ABOUT TAM LIN

The Play

Halloween, the Faerie Queen and her harem of elven knights, magic, a runaway bride, mistaken identity, sword-fighting, saucy lassies, handsome laddies, an ambitious warlord, a defiant matriarch, the natural and supernatural worlds, freedom, desire, the old Elizabethan bed trick, and haggis. The romantic comedy TAM LIN is a play about everything.

TAM LIN is influenced by both Monty Python and Shakespeare, but especially Shakespeare - the wordplay, magic, and star-crossed lovers are standard devices of the Bard's comedies, and like much of Shakespeare's work, the play is based on classic source material but embellished with new characters and situations. Although this play borrows many Shakespearean conventions, it does break a cardinal Shakespeare taboo - the heroine loses her virginity before marriage. Shakespeare's Elizabethan audiences would have been scandalized.

The Production

This play began its life at readings at NYCPlaywrights, a theatre group that meets each Wednesday in Greenwich Village to read new works. In October of 2002, it was given a staged reading by the Deptford Players. Encouraged by the response to the play, the author created a company Mergatroyd Productions, in order to produce TAM LIN off-off Broadway. Since the author is an employee of Actors' Equity, and because the author loves actors and wants to respect the struggle for actors' rights, the production is under an Equity approved Showcase Code.

The Plot

The play begins on Halloween, when the Queen of the Faeries kidnaps the handsome young heir of the house of Roxbrugh to be her love-slave, to the great annoyance of her elven knights Thompson, Sullivan and MacDougal.

Seven years later, Janet, of the rival house of Dunbar, runs away from home to escape the marriage her father, Lord Dunbar, has arranged for her with his ally Lord Aberdeen. Janet meets Tam Lin in the forest of Carterhaugh. Inflamed by his beauty and determined to make herself less marriageable, she offers herself to him. Afterwards he urges her to leave Carterhaugh to avoid the wrath of the Faerie Queen.

While Janet is in Carterhaugh, her lady-in-waiting Margaret spends the night with Aberdeen. Margaret has long loved the dashing and famous Aberdeen from afar and cannot resist the impulse to masquerade as Janet in order to be with him.

The elven knights are impatient to be rid of Tam Lin, since after seven years the Faerie Queen shows no sign of growing bored with him. They learn of Janet's encounter with Tam Lin, and plot to get her to win him away from the Queen. They tell Tam Lin that the Faerie Queen has plans to sacrifice him on Halloween.

Janet’s betrothal was part of Lord Dunbar’s plan to take Carterhaugh from the Roxbrughs, but although Lady Roxbrugh, the widowed matriarch of the clan is in bad health, she decides to fight. While Dunbar is off battling some Roxbrughs in the north, Lady Roxbrugh’s troops stage a siege against Dunbar castle, preventing Janet from returning to Tam Lin on the Autumn Equinox.

When Janet develops morning sickness, she knows she must return to Carterhaugh on Halloween to battle the Queen of the Faeries for the fate of Tam Lin.

Want to find out how it all turns out? You can read a draft of the script here. Technical note: it's a PDF document, so you'll need to install Acrobat Viewer (available for free at adobe.com) to view it.

Better yet, come and see the play October 28 through November 2 at The Producers Club, 358 W. 44th Street in New York City. Show times are 8PM, except for the 3PM Sunday matinee. For more information, email tamlin@tamlin-online.com.

The Source

This play is based on the Scottish folk ballad Tam Lin. There are many different versions of the ballad, mainly because it existed for hundreds of years as part of a non-literate folk tradition. The versions were finally collected and committed to paper by folk lore scholar Francis James Child. This play is mainly based on a combination of Childe Ballad #39A and the version recorded by Fairport Convention on their 1969 album Liege & Lief, along with some plot and character inventions. A good resource for information on the Tam Lin ballad is available on the Internet at www.tam-lin.org.

Glossary

	angelica An herb, member of the carrot family, botanical name Angelica Archangelica . The culinary plant, with its green, celery-like stalks, grows wild in northern European countries.  Traditionally angelica was recognized for its digestive properties.  Its aromatic seeds have been used to flavor cordials and liqueurs. Its roots and fruit yield a flavoring oil and was believed to be a protection against witchcraft, evil spirits and spells.
	autumn equinox The autumnal equinox falls about September 23, as the sun crosses the celestial equator going south. The term equinox also refers to either of two points in the sky where the ecliptic and the celestial equator intersect.  The Celts called the day Alban Elved  ("The Light of the Water') and modern pagans call it Mabon, and  celebrate the bounty of the Earth on this day.
	Caledonia Scotland. Caledonia is the Latin rendering of the Celtic word "Celyddon" which means “a dweller in woods and forests.” The word Celt is itself a contraction of the same word and means the same thing. The influence of Celtic culture is felt throughout northern Europe, but especially in Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall in England and Brittany in France.
	Firth of Forth The Firth of Forth is the estuary or firth of the River Forth, where it flows into the North Sea between Fife to the north, and West Lothian, the City of Edinburgh, and East Lothian to the south. It is mentioned frequently in Scottish folk music. MAP
	haggis A traditional Scottish dish that consists of the heart, liver, and lungs of a sheep or a calf minced with suet, onions, oatmeal, and seasonings boiled in the stomach of the animal. A true, traditional haggis cannot legally be sold in the United States because the Food and Drug Administration considers products made with lung tissue unfit for human consumption. Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet, wrote an Address to a Haggis, and a haggis is traditionally served as part of a Burns supper celebrated annually on January 25.
	Halloween Halloween was called Samhain by the ancient Celts - the Scottish pronounced it "Sav-in." It was the time when the veil between the earthly world and the world of the spirits was thin enough for divine beings, the spirits of the dead, and mortals to cross over to the other side. In the Scottish Highlands, young men would run the boundaries of their farms after sunset with blazing torches to protect the family from the Faeries and malevolent forces that were free to walk the land at night, causing mischief. The Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, (Celtic priests), to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter. See the History Channel's Halloween page for more details.
	starry-gazy pie  Starry-gazy pie (aka "stargazey pie") is a dish from Cornwall, in the south of England and was popular in Elizabethan times - it is a fish pie with whole fish heads poking through the crust. Recipes are available online. Eat them up, yum.
	Thompson, Sullivan, MacDougal The Elven Knights are named for three parallel streets in Greenwich Village, New York City, where the play TAM LIN was developed. View a map.
	trebuchet A trebuchet (pronounced treb-you-SHET) was a large medieval catapult used to hurl rocks and other heavy items at castles to knock holes in the walls. It worked by dropping a great weight that was attached to the short end of a long lever-arm. The long end of the lever was thereby raised with considerable velocity, pulling a sling that contained the projectile. The sling would increase the effective length of the lever arm, adding even more speed to the final projectile before the sling released it.