A Renaissance Short Story

By Bob Becker

Many, many years ago, in medieval Brittany, there lived a very popular king named Cole. Now, Old King Cole was a merry old soul and these were a few of his favorite things: his pipe, his bowl, and his fiddlers 4. Yes, there were originally 4 fiddlers. You’ve only heard of 3 because the fourth one left the King’s band for a long running engagement on The Roof.

Old King Cole’s favorite food was cabbage salad. He loved cabbage salad so much, that he proclaimed that henceforth, every kitchen in Brittany would be required to have cabbage salad available. That proclamation is with us to this day. It has become known as Cole’s Law.

Old King Cole appreciated the contributions the Jewish community made to his kingdom. So he decreed that a young Jewish lad who desired a title could earn one by slaying a dragon. The first step was to get trained in the use of a lance. The young men who were accepted into lance training were given the status of Lanceman.

The training was intense and required years of practice. So much so, that upon completion of the training, a Lanceman would be promoted to the rank of Lance a Lot.

The dangerous dragons were believed to be all females. If a Lance a Lot successfully impaled a dragon with his lance, he was knighted and henceforth addressed as Sir Lance a Lot. If the Lance a Lot was unsuccessful, he would be addressed as Missed‘er.

The dragon slaying knights gathered for a dinner every spring as guests of the Old King Cole. When Sir Lance a Lot attended the Spring Knight’s dinners, he blended in fairly well with the Christian knights except for one thing: his dietary restrictions. Every so often, at the dinner, someone would notice that but the Christians didn’t know anything about kashrut so they would not understand why the he wouldn’t eat certain foods. So they would ask:

"Why is this knight different from all other knights?"