Time travel, for the moment, is pretty...

Time travel, for the moment, is pretty much limited to books and films.

But there is also the kind that Catherine Kay prefers. She becomes ancient Irish warrior Queen Medbh (pronounced Mave) for the Grand National Irish Fair and Music Festival, which will take place this weekend at Santa Anita Race Track in Arcadia.

“I came into the knowledge of herself in the ‘70s,” Kay said. “I was so fascinated by her.”

Queen Medbh was a woman of heroic proportions who lived around the time of Christ in Connaught and was known as much for her insatiable sexual appetite as for her leadership in battle.

“She was pretty powerful. She was not one to be crossed,” said Kay, who has been working with the fair for 14 years as a member of its sponsoring group, the Irish Fair Foundation of Southern California.

In 1981, Kay took it upon herself to be Queen Medbh, donning what she describes as a rather shabby costume that drew a lot of strange looks. One young man, Arthur Gribben, then an assistant professor of Celtic studies at UCLA, recognized her character, Kay said.

“We sat on a log,” she said. “He had a little bitty notebook and he gave me the names” of books to read for research.

“Now, you know, Queen Medbh is not a solitary creature on a log,” Kay said. About 90 people will form an encampment called the Royal Tara Village at the fair, she said. They will act as the queen’s court, brought from their time to ours through “fairy rings.”

“We’re time warping and actually liking it, which is even scarier,” Kay said.

There will be lots of other activities at the fair, including some authentic Irish bands.

You can visit the village, in its present state, between 10 a.m. and 7 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, at the race track, 285 W. Huntington Drive.

Tickets are $12.50 for adults, $7.50 for senior citizens and students between 18 and 25 with I.D., and $5.50 for youths 13 to 18. Children younger than 13 get in free.