A Scotch Copy of a Poem on Heraldry

NOTES TO A SCOTCH COPY OF A POEM ON HERALDRY.

    This poem does not seem to have been originally written by a Scotchman: its English origin appears clearly from the phraseology, distinctions and conceits, e. g. the nomenclature of roundles, which was never adopted in Scotland, where the simpler phraseology employed in France was in use. The spelling (quhill, quham, &c.) is certainly often Scotch, but for that the Scotch transcriber, Loutfut, is doubtless answerable. Sir William Comyn (or Cumming), of Inverallochy, described in the heading of the poem Marchmont Herald, is best known as Lyon king of Arms from 1512 onwards, an office in which he seems to have immediately preceded Sir David Lyndsay. It is no small indication of the weight attached to Lyon's office, and the sacredness of his person, at that period, that in 1515 Lord Drummond, one of the most powerful of the Scotch nobles of his day, was declared guilty of treason, attainted, and sentenced to confinement in Blackness castle, for giving Comyn a blow with his fist, ‘dum eum de ineptiis suis admoneret.’ The poem seems to belong to a period later than Nicolas Upton (1440) and the Book of St Albans (1486), but must be earlier than Gerard Legh (1562), John Boswell (1572), and Sir John Ferne (1586), the three principal heraldic writers of the Elizabethan age. No very old Scotch systematic treatises on Heraldry exist in print, and apparently none in manuscript, though there are numerous books of blazonry and illuminated collections of arms in MS. of the 16th century. Mackenzie in the 17th, and the more elaborate Nisbet in the 18th century, are the great Scotch authorities. Loutfut the transcriber had probably not been very thoroughly instructed in the science of arms, as he has mistaken words, and made blunders of copyism to such an extent that it is sometimes difficult to unravel the meaning of the text.
    l. 46. ‘Aglot,’ a misreading for annulet, the usual difference for a fifth son. The ‘eaglet,’ or young eagle, for which the transcriber has taken the word, is a common bearing in English heraldry, though not one of the recognized marks of cadency.
    l. 51-53. The mention of the settlement of Britain by Brutus is sufficient proof of the English origin of the poem. From the 14th century downwards, one of the principal points on which the hotly-contested question of Scottish independence was supposed to hinge, was whether the English story of the colonization of Britain by the sons of the Trojan hero Brutus was true or false. It was stoutly denied by the Scots, who traced the foundation of their nationality up to the Greek Gathelus and his wife Scota, the daughter of Pharaoh who protected the infant Moses; and no Scotsman of the 15th or 16th century would have given his imprimatur to the Brutus story.
    l. 64-70. Four colours are proper, being pure colours: purpure, being a mixed colour, is less proper though ‘suffered’ in arms: an assertion to be found in nearly similar words in various old French and Spanish as well as English works on arms. Numerical conceits were greatly in favour among the old heralds, and are a key to half the pedantries and anomalies that have crept into heraldic nomenclature and classification. Four and fifteen are numbers especially favoured by the author of this poem — and the impropriety of purpure is set forth in order to show four to be the proper number of colours. A great many of the old writers on arms, including particularly Dame Juliana Berners and Gerard Legh, favour nine above all other numbers. It was three times the number of the Trinity, — there were nine virtues, nine orders of angels, nine muses, nine beatitudes, nine male worthies, and nine female worthies. The Book of St Albans says: ‘This lawe of armys was founded on the IX order of angellys in heven encrownyd vith precyous stonys of colour and of vertues dyvers. Also of theym are fyguryed the colours in armys.’ Dame Juliana[,] Legh, and other writers, to obtain their nine tinctures (colours and metals), bring in not only purpure, which was rare, but sanguine and tenny, which were never in use. Sylvanus Morgan (1661), on the other hand, inclines to reject purpure altogether, while Spelman exalts it above every other tincture. One of the results of this determination to resolve everything to nine, was the addition by Legh to the six marks of cadency in actual use, of the rose, crossmoline, and double quaterfoil, which were never really used. They are again rejected in the latest edition of Legh's ‘Accedens,’ as also by Bosswell: but are nevertheless retained in many of the modern elementary works on Heraldry.
    l. 96. One would almost be inclined to think that the word printed ‘sic’ must have been originally ‘pale’ rather than fess, or else that ‘barris’ stands for ‘pales;’ it seems unlikely that both bar and fess would be enumerated and pale omitted among the four things that ‘brekis’ arms; a more correct idea, by the way, of the common character of the ‘Honourable Ordinaries’ than is to be found in most of the old authorities.
    l. 104-106. ‘Thyse thre termes, Of, And, Wyth. shall not be rehercyd in armis but onys ony of them.' — Book of St Albans.
    ‘There are fower wordes, whereof you may not name any of them twise in the blazonne of one cote, & these be they: Of, On, And, With. These may not be spoken any more than once in one cote: if they be, it is accompted such a fault, as he that committed the same is not worthy to blaze a cote.’ — Gerard Legh.
    l. 111. ‘wyndows,’ i.e. ‘wounds.’ Roundles purpure are so called by Bosswell, the derivation being obvious. Most heralds prefer the name ‘golpes.’
    l. 127-134. Of the fifteen lions enumerated, the designations of the first and thirteenth are omitted, doubtless by the transcriber's oversight. As to the eleventh ‘copray,’ query if tricorporate?
    l. 135-142. Of the fifteen crosses mentioned, the third is ‘undy.’ The fourth, ‘paty,’ is probably meant for ‘patoncée,’ formée (identical with patée) being separately enumerated. The specific character of the fifth is omitted; the fourteenth is ‘raguly.’ Is ‘sucylye’ (the fifteenth) ‘resarcelée’? ‘Sarcelée’ had been already enumerated as the thirteenth cross.
    l. 143-4. ‘Verray’ must surely stand for ‘enurny,’ the term used in French and sometimes in English heraldry for a bordure charged with any animal.
    l. 152-155. These lines are unintelligible as they stand. It cannot be meant that fleurs-de-lis or pellets should not be named, or their number stated, if there are more than two. But if for “ij” we read “viij” the sense is at once apparent, as we come exactly to the dictum of the old heralds, and the word eight is an admissible rhyme to ‘rycht’ in the succeeding line.
    l. 156, 157, are a little obscure. Tortell pellets, according to the nomenclature of some old heralds, would be identical with pellets or roundles sable. If so, but two things are named, not three. Menestrier uses the term “torteau = besant,” for a roundle parted per fess gules and or; and it is conceivable that the herald-poet may mean by torteaux-pellets, roundles parted per fess gules and sable: but in any view there seems little point in this passage.
    l. 158-160 are also a little unsatisfactory. Fusils, mascles, and lozenges are of course things ‘like utheris even’ — but why should fusils, when multiplied in number, be called mascles? If however for the words ‘fussewis,’ ‘masklewis,’ in l. 159, and ‘losengis’ in l. 160, we read fusilly, mascally, lozengy, the sense is clear, viz. if there be many fusils, mascles or lozenges, blazon the field fusilly, mascally or lozengy.
    l. 165. ‘pictes,’ i. e. pikes.
    l. 166-169. This passage, though rather unintelligible as it stands, evidently refers to the division of the shield by partition lines, a subject which has been made the theme of much obscure pedantry by the early heralds, whose distinctions are by no means exactly observed by the poet. What ‘glondes’ stands for, I cannot make out. Two modes of dividing the field called ‘pynyons,’ are given in the Book of St Albans, of which the latter is ‘cheverounce, and that may be clawry, counterly, quarterly, gerery, and byally.’ ‘Gereri’ is ‘whan thre cheverounce be togyder or moo,’ corresponding to our gyronny of six or of eight. ‘Byally,’ the word which appears as ‘belly’ in l. 169, is ‘whan a barre is betwean two cheffrounce,’ another variety of the gyronny of six of later heralds. l. 168 seems to say that a partition line may (as well as a leg or head) be ‘raschit,’ or erased. A line dancetté, or sometimes with indentations more like those of an erased head or leg, is called ‘rasit’ or erased by Upton, Dame Juliana, and Sir John Ferne. ‘Gerondy’ is, according to the Book of St Albans, ‘gereri’ (or gyronny of nine) with a fessitarget (i. e. an escutcheon of pretence) in the centre of the shield. ‘Verry,’ or vairé, is by the same authority enumerated, not as a fur only, but as a mode of parting the shield ‘when the field is made like gobolettys of dyvers colours.’ Along with cheeky and undy, it is enumerated as one of the ‘Coat armoures grytty.’

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