Scarborough Fair

Overview

Scarborough Fair consists of four twin-barreled, rapid-fire, high-power pistols, two which Bayonetta holds in her hands and two which attach to (and can fire using) her feet. The guns are attached to her feet by aid of the rail on the top of the guns which slides into a gap in her high heels. The guns were forged by Rodin and given to Bayonetta very early on in the game, serving as the default equipped weapons, however even if they are unequipped you can still fire one of the pistols at any time using the X button on the Xbox 360 version of the game or the square button on the  Playstation 3 version.  
 
Each of the guns has its own individual name and all of the guns have 'Scarborough Fair' written down the side of the upper barrel in gold lettering, along with 'Scarborough Fair by Rodin' engraved along the lower barrel and below that the guns name, along with a statement after it. The individual engravings on the guns read 'Parsley, ever joyous', 'Sage, ever strong', 'Rosemary, ever reminiscent' and 'Thyme, ever courageous'. Each gun also has a different colored gem in it, reflecting the color of the flower of the herb it is named after. These magical gems each have a bullet encased in them and allow Bayonetta to magically summon the bullets which are fired from the guns. The charms which hang from the grips of the guns are further references to the herbs the guns are named after. As well as using its normal firing mode the gun can also be opened at the breach to be loaded with different bullets and fired single-shot. It is particularly notable that one of the guns is named after rosemary as this herb is of symbolic importance in the story of Bayonetta and is mentioned twice. Another interesting design aspect to note is if two of the guns are placed alongside each other in the right way it can be seen that the patterns on their upper barrels make up the mark of the witch.
 
The name of the collection of guns is a reference to an old English ballad of the same name, which in most versions has a refrain containing the lyrics 'parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme'. The name of the ballad is in turn a reference to a trading fair which took place in Scarborough, an English coastal town, in the late middle ages. 
 

Development

Muneyuki “Johnny” Kotegawa , weapons designer and modeler for Bayonetta says that the red color of the guns was partly due to color balancing and partly due to the fact that the red would stand out and help players to see where exactly Bayonetta's limbs were placed during fast-paced combat. The gun is partly based around the real-word gun, the Derringer and Kotegawa noted that he named the guns after herbs due to the close traditional link between witches and herbs.