Tableaux

 An entry to Sepia Saturday. "Using old images as prompts for new reflections"

The Health Fairy takes centre stage on our prompt picture this week but as the concept of that fairy is a mystery to me I've gone with what it looks like, a tableau.

And this postcard produced by Emil Goetz, a company which published cards from 1896-1958 in Lucerne, date of the card unknown as unsent. But lets get back to the heroic scene with soaring mountains and a rainbow. The scene shows "The Rütlischwur", a legendary oath of Switzerland taken on the Rütli mountain meadow by Lake Lucerne.  The date of the first oath is thought to be 1291 and today the 1st August is a national holiday.  Three chiefs of the cantons swear to be a single people and rather die than be in slavery so it was appropriate in 1940, as war surrounded neutral Switzerland,  that General Guisan made a speech vowing that the country would never surrender if invaded. 

Happily in the picture people have come prepared with shields and raised swords but significantly the women folk seem to be busy elsewhere.  Joan of Arc would never have stood for that

as she mounts a ladder at Orleans to defeat the English and tipping the 100 years war in France's favour.  The participants here are the citizens of St Macaire en Mauges in February 1910 "Tableau Vivant. Jeanne d'Arc montant a l'assaut des Tourelles".  The celebration of Joan of Arc take place all over France every year but this year it would have been an even bigger event than normal  as it was the 600th anniversary of her birth. 

 Postcard  from the Bryn Mawr College Library collection

Here I have managed to find the wings from the prompt photo, they may not be health fairies but more girls get to wear wings . The "Saint Germain sur Moine Féte de Jeanne d'Arc - Tableaux vivants - Jeanne glorieuse".