The Curiosities of Heraldry Part 5

The =saltire=, popularly called St. Andrew's cross, is formed like two bends crossing each other in the centre of the escocheon. A great variety of opinions has existed as to its origin. Some authors take it for an antient piece of harness attached to the saddle of a horse to enable the rider, _sauter dessous_, to jump down.[94] Others derive it from an instrument used _in saltu_, in the forest, for the purpose of taking wild beasts; but neither of these hypotheses seems very probable. Leigh says, "This in the old tyme, was of y{e} height of a man, and was borne of such as used to scale the walls [_saltare in muros_] of towns. For it was driven full of pinnes necessary to that purpose. And walles of townes were _then_ but lowe as appeared by the walls of Rome, whiche were suche that Remus easelye leaped over them. Witnesseth also the same the citie of Winchester whose walls were overlooked of Colbrande, chieftaine of the Danes, who were slayne by Guye, Erle of Warwike." The =cheveron=, which resembles a pair of rafters, is likewise of very uncertain origin. It has generally been considered as a kind of architectural emblem. Leigh, speaking of a coat containing three cheveronels, or little cheverons, says, "The ancestour of this cote hath builded iij greate houses in one province," and this remark applies with some truth to the Lewkenors of Suss.e.x, who bore similar arms, though whether a.s.sumed from such a circ.u.mstance I cannot ascertain. The =pile= is a wedge-like figure based upon the edge of the shield, and having its apex inwards. The following etymons have been suggested: 1, _pilum_, Lat. the head of an arrow; the Spaniards and Italians call this ordinary _cuspis_. 2, _pile_, French, a strong pointed timber driven into boggy ground to make a firm foundation.

3, _pied_, French, the foot; in French armory it is called _pieu_. I cannot admit any of these derivations, though perhaps my own etymon may not be deemed less irrelevant, viz. _pellis_, the skin of a beast, whence our English terms pell, pelt, peltry, &c. The skin of a wild beast, deprived of the head and fore legs, and fastened round the neck by the hinder ones, would form a rude garment, such as the hunter would consider an honourable trophy of his skill, and such as the soldier of an unpolished age would by no means despise; and it would resemble, with tolerable exactness, the pile of heraldry. The QUARTER is, as the word implies, a fourth part of the field, differing in tincture from the remainder; and the CANTON, a smaller quadrangular figure in the dexter, or sinister, chief of the escocheon, so called from the French _cantone_, cornered.

The following figures rank as sub-ordinaries, viz. _Flasques_, _Flanches_, the _Fret_, _Border_, _Orle_, _Tressure_, _Gyron_, &c.

FLASQUES, always borne in pairs, are two pieces hollowed out at each side of the shield: FLANCHES and VOIDERS are modifications of this bearing. The last, says Leigh,[95] "is the reward of a gentlewoman for service by her done to the prince or princess." It is not improbable that it was borrowed from a peculiar fashion in female costume which prevailed temp. Richard II. Chaucer uses the word _voided_ in the sense of removed, made empty, and this is probably the origin of the term.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

When a shield is divided into eight acute-angled triangles, by lines drawn perpendicularly, horizontally, and diagonally through the centre, it is blazoned by the phrase '_gyronny_ of eight,' and so of any other number of equal part.i.tions of the same form. If one of these triangles occur singly it is termed a _gyron_. For this term the nomenclature of heraldry is indebted to the Spanish language, in which it means a gore, gusset, or triangular piece of cloth. The family of Giron, subsequently enn.o.bled as Dukes of Ossona, bear three such figures in their arms, from the following circ.u.mstance. Alphonso VI, king of Spain, in a battle with the Moors, had his horse killed under him, when, being in great personal danger, he was rescued and remounted by Don Roderico de Cissneres, who, as a memorial of the event, cut three triangular pieces from his sovereign's mantle, which being afterwards exhibited to the king, he bestowed on his valiant follower an adequate reward, and gave him permission to bear three gyrons as his arms. The English family of Gurr, whose surname was probably derived from the village of Gueures, near Dieppe, bear 'gyronny ... and ...' as a 'canting' or allusive coat. Some derive this species of bearing from a kind of patchwork mantle of various colours. Hence, doubtless, also arose that picturesque species of bearing called _chequy_, consisting of alternate squares of different tinctures. Chaucer and Spenser use the word _checkelatoun_; probably in this sense:

"His robe was _cheque-latoun_."

_Knight's Tale._

"But in a jacket, quilted richly rare Upon _checklaton_, was he richly dight."

_Faerie Queen._

The chequered dress of the Celtic nations, still retained in the Highland plaid or tartan, may, in some way, have originated the chequered coat of heraldry. At all events, this is a more probable source than the chess-board, from which some writers derive it.

Most of the ordinaries have their diminutives, as the bendlet, the pallet, the cheveronel, &c. These are usually bounded by straight lines; but the ordinaries themselves admit of a variety of modifications of outline, as follows: 1. _Indented_, like the teeth of a saw. According to Upton, this line represents the teeth of wild beasts, but Dallaway derives it from a moulding much employed in Saxon architecture. 2. _Crenelle_, or embattled, like the top of a castle, (Lat. _crena_, a notch.) The 'licentia crenellare' of the middle ages was the sovereign's permission to his n.o.bles to embattle or fortify their mansions. 3. _Nebuly_ (nebulosus,) from its resemblance to clouds. 4. _Wavy_, or undulated. 5. _Dancette_, like indented, but larger, and consisting of only three pieces. 6.

_Engrailed_, a number of little semi-circles connected in a line, the points of junction being turned outward. Johnson derives this word from the French 'grele,' hail, marked or indented as with hailstones. And 7.

_Invecked_, the same as the last, but reversed.

ROUNDLES are charges, as their name implies, of a circular form. The first idea of bearing them as charges in heraldry may have been suggested by the studs or k.n.o.bs by which the parts of an actual buckler were strengthened and held together. As soon as blazon was introduced they received distinctive names, according to their tinctures. The bezant (or) was supposed to represent a gold coin, in value about a ducat, struck at Constantinople (Byzantium) in the times of the Crusades. Leigh, however, a.s.signs it a much greater value, and calls it a talent weighing 104 lbs.

troy, and worth 3750_l._ "Of these beisaunts you shall rede dyversly in Scripture, as when Salomon had geuen unto Hiram xx cities, he again gave vnto Salomon 120 _beisaunts_ of gold, whereof these toke their first name," ('obeisance?') The _plate_ (argent) was probably some kind of silver coin. The _torteaux_ (red) called in the Boke of S. A. "tortellys, or litill cakys," are said to be emblematical of plenty, and to represent a cake of bread. The modern French 'torteau' is applied more exclusively to a kind of oil-cake of an oblong form used as food for cattle.

'Tortilla,' in Spanish, is a cake compounded of flour and lard. Dame J.

Berners says it should be called _wastel_. 'Wastel-brede' is defined in the glossary to Chaucer, as bread made of the finest flour, and derived from the French 'gasteau.' Chaucer represents his Prioresse as keeping small hounds

"that she fedde With rosted flesh, and milk and _wastel brede_."

_Prol. Cant. Tales._

_Pommes_ (green), says Dallaway, are berries; but if etymology is worth anything, they must be apples, and such Leigh calls them. _Hurts_ (blue) the same authority considers berries, and most heralds have taken them to be those diminutive things, whortleberries, or as they are called in Suss.e.x, Cornwall, and Devonshire, 'hurts.' But I am rather inclined with Leigh to consider them representations of the 'black and _blue_'

contusions resulting from the "clumsy thumps" of war. _Pellets_ or _Ogresses_ (black) are the 'piletta' or leaden k.n.o.bs forming the heads of blunt arrows for killing deer without injuring the skin.[96] _Golpes_ (purple) are wounds, and when they stand five in a shield may have a religious allusion to the five wounds of Christ. _Oranges_ (tenne) speak for themselves; and _Guzes_, Leigh says, are eyeb.a.l.l.s; but as their colour is sanguine, or dull red, this seems unlikely.

The _Annulet_ seems to have been taken from the ring armour, much in use about the period of the Norman Conquest. The _Orle_, or false escocheon, is merely a band going round the shield at a short distance from the edge: it was probably borrowed from an antient mode of ornamenting a shield, serving as a kind of frame to the princ.i.p.al charge. Animals or flowers disposed round the escocheon in the same form, are also termed an orle.

The _bordure_, or border, explains itself. Like the orle, it was primarily designed as an ornament. The _lozenge_, derived by Glover from the quarry, or small pane of gla.s.s of this shape, Dallaway thinks originated in the diamond-shaped cushions which occur on tombs to support the heads of female effigies, as helmets do those of men. The _mascle_ is taken for the mesh of a net. When many are united the arms are blazoned _masculy_, and then represent a rich network thrown over the armour. At the siege of Carlaverok a certain knight is described as having his armour and vestments 'masculy or and azure:'

"Son harnois et son attire Avoit mascle de or et de azure."

_Billets_ have been conjectured to be representations of oblong camps, but from the name they would seem to be _letters_. They may have been originally a.s.signed to bearers of important despatches. _Guttee_ is the term applied to a field or charge sprinkled over with drops of gold, silver, blood, tears, &c. according to the tincture. This kind of bearing is said to have originated with the Duke of Anjou, King of Sicily, who, after the loss of that island, appeared at a tournament with a black shield sprinkled with drops of water, to represent tears, thus indicating both his grief and his loss.[97] A warrior returning victorious from battle, with his buckler sprinkled with blood, would, in the early days of heraldry, readily have adopted the bearing afterwards called 'guttee de sang.' In those times the besiegers of a fortress were often a.s.sailed with boiling pitch, poured by the besieged through the machicolations of the wall constructed for such purposes. Splashes of this pitch falling upon some besieger's shield, in all probability gave the first idea of 'guttee de poix.' The _fusil_ is like the lozenge, but narrower. Whatever the charge may mean, the name is evidently a corruption of the Fr. _fuseau_, a spindle. The _fret_ may have been borrowed from the architectural ornaments of the interior of a roof, or more probably, from a knotted cord. It is sometimes called =Harington's Knot=, though it is not peculiar to the arms of that family, for it was also borne by the baronial races of Echingham, Audley, and Verdon, and by many other families.[98]

My purpose being not to describe all the charges or figures occurring in heraldry, but merely to a.s.sign a reasonable origin for those which appear to the uninitiated to have neither propriety nor meaning, I pa.s.s by many others, and come to those to which a symbolical sense is more readily attachable, as the heavenly bodies, animals, vegetables, weapons of war, implements of labour, &c. &c. Here I shall merely offer some general remarks, for it is less my object to gratify curiosity on this subject than to excite that attention to it which it really deserves, and therefore I must say, with gentle Dame Julyan, "Bot for to reherce all the signys that be borne in armys it were too long a tarying, nor I can not do hit: _ther be so mony_!"

The heavenly bodies occur frequently in heraldry, and include the Sun, 'in his glory,' or 'eclipsed;' the Moon, 'incressant,' 'in her complement,'

'decressant,' and 'in her detriment,' or eclipse; stars and comets. The _crescent_ was the standard of the Saracens during the crusades, as it is of their successors, the Turks, at this day. As one of the antient laws of chivalry enacted that the vanquisher of a Saracen gentleman should a.s.sume his arms, it is not remarkable that the crescent was, in the latter Crusades, often transferred to the Christian shield; although we must reject the notion that the infidels bore regular heraldric devices. It is probable, however, that their bucklers were ornamented in various ways with their national symbol. Several authentic instances of arms with crescents borne by English families from that early date, are to be found.

Most of the families of Ellis, of this country, bear a cross with four or more crescents, derived from Sir Archibald Ellis, of Yorkshire, who went to the Holy Land. From a miraculous event said to have happened during the Crusade under Rich. I. to Sir Robert Sackville, the n.o.ble descendants of that personage still bear an _estoile_, or star, as their crest.

The ELEMENTS also furnish armorial charges, as flames of fire, rocks, stones, _islands_, thunderbolts, clouds, rainbows, water, and fountains.

These last are represented by azure roundles charged with three bars wavy argent. In the arms of Sykes, of Yorkshire, they are called _sykes_--that being a provincialism for little pools or springs. The antient family of Gorges bore a _gurges_, or whirlpool, an unique instance, I believe, of that bearing.

If we derive heraldry from the standards of antient nations, then, undoubtedly, ANIMALS are the very oldest of armorial charges, since those standards almost invariably exhibited some animal as their device.

Familiar examples present themselves in the Roman _eagle_ and the Saxon _horse_. Of QUADRUPEDS the lion occupies the first place, and is far more usual than any other animal whatever. The king of beasts is found in the heraldric field in almost every variety of posture, and tinctured with every hue recognized by the laws of blazon. It may be remarked here, that in the early days of heraldry animals were probably borne of their 'proper' or natural colour, but as, in process of time, the use of arms became more common, and the generous qualities of the lion rendered him the object of general regard as an armorial ensign, it became absolutely necessary to vary his att.i.tudes and colours, for the purposes of distinction. The same remark applies, in a greater or less degree, to other animals and objects. As the emblem of courage the lion has been represented and misrepresented in a thousand forms. A well-drawn heraldric lion is a complete caricature of the animal; and hence the ire displayed by the country herald-painter when shown the lions in the Tower is very excusable: "What!" said the honest man, "tell me that's a lion; why I've painted lions rampant and lions pa.s.sant, and all sorts of lions these five and twenty years, and for sure I ought to know what a lion's like better than all that!"

The circ.u.mstance of the royal arms of England containing three lions and those of Scotland one, has rendered this animal a special favourite with British armorists. Leigh and Guillim, particularly, are very minute in their remarks upon him. The French heralds object to the representation of the lion _guardant_, that is, with his face turned full upon the spectator, and declare that this posture is proper to the leopard, "wherein," says Guillim, "they offer great indignity to that _roiall beast_, in that they will not admit him, as saith Upton, to show his full face, the sight whereof doth terrifie and astonish all the beasts of the field, and wherein consisteth his chiefest majesty, '=quia omnia animalia debent depingi et designari in suo ferociore actu=.'" The French still allude derisively to our national charge as only a leopard. That one of these dissimilar animals could be mistaken for the other affords singular evidence of the rudeness with which arms in the middle ages were delineated.

[Ill.u.s.tration: (Lyon rampant. Guillim.)]

The _leopard_, as an heraldric charge, has been treated with more obloquy than he deserves, from the erroneous notion that he was a bigenerous animal, bred between the lion and the female panther. The _bear_ is generally borne muzzled and 'salient,' leaping, or rather jumping, the posture of the animal most familiar to our ancestors, who greatly delighted in his uncouth dancing. The _elephant_, the _wolf_, one of the most elegant of heraldric devices, the _fox_, the _rabbit_, the _squirrel_, the _monkey_, the _beaver_, the _porcupine_, the _cat-a-mountain_, and many other wild animals borne in arms, need no comment.

The _heraldric tiger_ furnishes another proof of the ignorance of our ancestors in the natural history of foreign animals. It is represented thus:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Among the domestic animals borne in arms are the _horse_, the _a.s.s_, the _camel_, the _bull_, the _ox_, the _greyhound_, the _talbot_ or mastiff, the _ram_, the _lamb_, the _hog_, &c.

The horse, from his a.s.sociations with chivalry and war, has ever been a favourite charge. The lamb, as commonly represented, with the nimbus round its head and the banner of the cross, is termed a _holy lamb_. The _alant_ or wolf-dog, an extinct species, is of rare occurrence in arms.

"Abouten his char ther wenten white _alauns_, Twenty and mo as gret as any stere, To hunten at the leon or the dere."

_Chaucer._

The _alant_ was the supporter of Fynes, Lord Dacre.

Most of the above were probably borne emblematically, but the _stag_, _deer_, _boar_, &c., seem to be trophies of the chase, especially when their heads only occur. The heads and other parts of animals are represented either as _couped_, cut off smoothly, or _erased_, torn off as it were with violence, leaving the place of separation jagged and uneven.

The boar's head may have been derived from the old custom of serving up a boar's head at the tables of feudal n.o.bles. This practice is still observed in the hall of Queen's College, Oxford, on Christmas-day, when an antient song or carol, appropriate enough to the ceremony, though not very well befitting the time and the place, is sung. It begins thus:

"The boar's head in hand bear I, Bedeck'd with bays and rosemary, And I pray you, my masters, be merry, Quot estis in convivio.

=Caput apri defero Reddens laudes Domino.="

The presentation of a boar's head forms the condition of several feudal tenures in various parts of the country. As an heraldric bearing, and as a sign for inns, it is of very antient date. Of its latter application the far-famed hostelry in Eastcheap affords one among many examples; while its use in armory was familiar to the father of English poesy, who, describing the equipments of Sir Thopas, says,

"His sheld was all of gold so red And therin was a _bore's hed_, A charboncle beside."

The annexed singular bearing, 'a cup with a boar's head erect,' evidently alludes to some obsolete custom or tenure.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

It may be remarked here that many of the terms of heraldry, when applied to the parts and att.i.tudes of 'beastes of venerie and huntyng,' are identical with the expressions used by learned _cha.s.seurs_ of the 'olden tyme,' and which are fully elucidated by Dame Julyan, Manwood, Blundeville, and other writers on woodcraft and the chase; a _science_, by the way, as systematic in the employment of terms as heraldry itself. This remark applies equally to the technical words in falconry used in describing falcons, hawks, &c., when they occur in armory.

When antient armorists had so far departed from the propriety of nature as to paint swans red and tigers green, it was not difficult to admit still greater monstrosities. Double-headed and double-tailed lions and eagles occur at an early date; but these are nothing when compared with the double and triple-_bodied_ lions figured by Leigh.[99] It would be a mere waste of time to speculate upon the origin of such bearings, which owe their birth to "the rich exuberance of a Gothick fancy"--the fertile source of the chimerical figures noticed in the next chapter.

Among BIRDS, the _eagle_ holds the highest rank. The lyon was the royal beast--this the imperial bird. He is almost uniformly exhibited in front, with expanded wings, and blazoned by the term 'displayed.' The _falcon_, _hawk_, _moor-c.o.c.k_, _swan_, _c.o.c.k_, _owl_, _stork_, _raven_, _turkey_, _peac.o.c.k_, _swallow_, and many others of the winged nation are well known to the most careless observer of armorial ensigns. The _Cornish chough_, a favourite charge, is curiously described by Clarke as "a _fine blue or purple black-bird_, with red beak and legs," and said to be "a n.o.ble bearing of antiquity, being accounted the _king of crows_!"

The _pelican_ was believed to feed her young with her own blood, and therefore represented "vulning herself," that is, pecking her breast for a supply of the vital fluid.[100] The wings are usually indorsed or thrown upwards; "but this," says Berry, "is unnecessary in the blazon, as that is the only position in which the pelican is represented in coat-armour."

This may be true of modern heraldry, but antiently this bird was borne 'close,' that is, with the wings down. The pelicans in the arms of the family of Pelham, resident at Laughton, co. Suss.e.x, temp. Henry IV, were represented in this manner, as appears from a shield in one of the spandrels of the western door of Laughton church, and from some painted gla.s.s in the churches of Waldron and Warbleton. In a carving of the fifteenth century, among the ruins of Robertsbridge Abbey, the pelicans have their wings slightly raised, and in the modern arms of Pelham they are indorsed, as shown below.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Laughton Church.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Robertsbridge Abbey.]