College Creates Renaissance for Time Trippers : Festival: Sword fighting, courtier courting and old-country dancing are among the archaic delights of a medieval May celebration.

Wearing billowing aroon pants, a loose-fitting Robin Hood-style shirt and a velvet broad-brimmed hat with a long feather, Scotty Ross bowed to all the ladies, jingled a ring of keys and smiled.

“I’m the town rogue,” he said. “I’m a key maker. I have the keys to all the chastity belts.”

In real life, Ross is the special-events coordinator for Golden West College. But on Saturday, he was a knave and a security guard at the Renaissance A-Faire held on the campus.

About 25,000 people time-warped to AD 1560 to see sword fighting, courtier courting and old-country dancing.

The campus quad, covered with 105 booths selling everything from medieval swords to Teriyaki beef, was transmogrified into an approximate re-enactment of what organizers said was a festival typical of the time when the arts, philosophy and mercantilism ushered Europe out of the Middle Ages.

Queen Elizabeth, in the second year of her long reign, strolled in behind a procession of court jesters, knights in chain mail, hoop-gowned ladies and two clans of Celts who hoisted pikes and yelled.

Charles V. Smith, the mayor of Westminster, was knighted “Sir Charles of the House of Smith” by a master of ceremonies who joked, “Upon your knee, sir. As a mayor of a city, this is the position you are used to,” before touching his shoulders with the broad side of a sword.

And a black-and-white clad knight dueled a green knight in a mace-swinging, sword-flailing, shield-clattering battle that ended with the green knight knocked downed from a blade blow to the stomach and cheers for the victor.

Lord Delfont got up from the ground and thrust his sword into the grass alongside the black-and-white knight and both bowed on their right knees to the queen.

With sweat streaming down his face, the felled Lord Delfont, who is really Mike Dempsey of Huntington Beach, autographed paper crowns for a group of children after the simulated battle.

“That’s fake when you got stabbed,” said 4-year-old Stephen Sandberg, clutching his crown to be signed.

“No it’s not,” his 7-year-old brother, Scott, corrected him.

Lots of things were fake Saturday, but that didn’t seem to bother the crowds of people, most of whom wore jeans and T-shirts as they meandered amid the big-eared elves, frocked attendants and warriors in glittering, flowing capes.

“I’m Queen Elizabeth in the 16th Century and Andrea Owen in the 20th Century,” said Owen, seated on her throne in one booth. “It feels great. I wish I was queen more than one time a year.”

Owen, who wore her red hair in a gold net, sat regally behind a table of chicken, rolls and artichokes. Her court sat beside on bales of hay, unruffled by their somewhat undignified surroundings.

Owen, a married woman from West Los Angeles, was recruited by her aunt, Margery Teall, to play the unmarried queen.

“It’s just fun to escape into a fantasy land for awhile,” said Teall of Huntington Beach, who first became interested in Elizabethan times when she went to the larger Renaissance Pleasure Faire years ago.