JOAN OF ARC PAGEANT

Hokitika Guardian, 10 June 1929, Page 8

JOAN OF ARC PAGEANT

WARRIOR MAID’S CASTLE ENTRY. ORLEANS, Franco, April 2G. From all over France and the AngloSaxon world delegations are awaited at Orleans to celebrate the oOOth anniveisary of the raising of the siege of the city of Joan of Arc. Perhaps because the festival of the deliverance of- Orleans, which will reach its apotheosis on May 7 and »i. commemorates one of the few decisive defeats which the English colours have sustained, England is taking the most prominent part of all foreign nations in the celebrations. Sir William Tyrrell, the British Ambassador to France, will he present, and a delegation from London will ho headed by Cardinal Bourne .Thousands of tourists are expected from all over the British Isles, and delegations are on their way from the United States. The stirring exents of the raising of the siege of Orleans by the Warrior Maid will ho ro-nnaoted on those two days in the presence of President Doumergue,• the Prime Minister (M. Poincare), and the high eecosiasbical dignitaries of France and Enlancl. The fetes on May 7 aVid 8 will he tlie culmination of the historic pageant which has already trod the road followed by the Warrior Maid from her native Lorraine. It will he one of the most elahdrate pageants staged in modern times. Mile. Schaeffer, who is impersonating loan of Are, yesterday made her entry into the Castle of Cliinon. near Blois, vs did Joan in 1429. Nearly 800 roi•liners in picturesque costumes of the Middle Ages followed the Maid, and oftor them came a Scottish delegation headed by Sir Alexander Stevenson, Lord Provost of Edinburgh.