Meet the Members

A Series About the Members of Panther Vale

Lady Siubhan Wallace (mka Judith Tazelaar) is a long-time member of the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) and is the present Seneschal of Panther Vale.

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Lady Siubhan attended her first SCA event during the summer of 1976. She attended an event in Toronto with her sister, Christianna Della Septemtrionslyvia, who later became the Baroness of the Barony of Northwood in the Midrealm (specifically Michigan). Several years later, when Lady Siubhan was a junior in high school in Amherst, Massachusetts, she learned that an SCA group was being formed in the Amherst area. Although unable to attend the first meeting, she did attend the second organizational meeting for the Shire of Bergental.

Her participation in Bergental activities was hampered for the first few years while she managed the local movie theater in Amherst. During that time she earned her Award of Arms, primarily for helping cook the feast at the Coronation of Aelfwine and Arastorm Arastorm as King and Queen of the East Kingdom in 1981 (AS XVI).

A major change in her participation occurred when Aethelhawk Keyfinder (mka James Tazelaar) move from The Northwood to Bergental. That event ushered in an era of full participation the activities of the Shire of Bergental and in the SCA in general. Attendance at the Pennsic Wars and other East Kingdom events was common during those years, although her major activities centered on service to Bergental, including a short stint as Minister of Arts and Sciences. Although she did some fighting, her major activities were cooking and Celtic embroidery. For her service to the Shire/Barony, Siubhan was inducted into the Bergental Order of the Fountain.

She and Aethelhawk married and in 1992, just as Bergental was becoming a Barony, moved to Crown Lands in Hartland, Vermont. They continued an active involvement with the SCA, mostly with the Barony of Bergental, until 1995 when they moved to Brookfield, Vermont and stepped down for a number of years to raise their children and earn additional degrees. In 2000, Siubhan was shopping in Barre, VT on Memorial Day weekend and saw a SCA direction sign. She went home, gathered up her family and follwed the signs to Hardwick, VT and found Panteria V in full swing. They stayed for the day but didn’t follow up on that initial contact.

As their children got older, Siubhan and Aethelhawk kept getting more and more questions about the medieval clothing and fighting gear that their children found around the house. Finally in then fall of 2006, their son saw an article about a Medieval Archery Shoot in essentially their own town and insisted on attending. Since their children were old enough and there was an end in sight for the schooling, they decided to become involved with the SCA again as active members of Panther Vale.