ÆTHELMEARC
COLLEGE OF HERALDS - commentary archive
Letter of Intent #103 Myfanwy ferch Rhiannon
Feast of St. Osburga
30 March, AS XLI
Greetings from Myfanwy!
Herein pray find commentary on Æ #103. Due to time constraints
(Gulf
Wars and prep for the Canterbury Tales event) this was not conflict
checked in the O&A; however, everything was conflict checked in the
LoARs from 7/06 to 10/06 (the most recent LoARs posted online that had
not been already inter-filed).
I remain your servant and the Society’s.
Lady Myfanwy ferch Rhiannon
Ruth Morrisson
myfanwy@nauticom.net
1. Gytha Oggasdohtor -- Per chevron inverted azure and vert, a cat
dormant Or, and three wolf’s teeth issuant from dexter base argent.
The Withycombe docs are as cited. The woman cited may be the same
Gytha that is mentioned in The Anglo-Saxon
Chronicles [p. 202, for the year 1067, from Manuscript D
(The Worcestor Chronicle)]:
In this year, Gytha, mother of Harold, went out to the Isle of
Flat- [sic]
home and the wives of many good men accompanied her: she remained
there for some time, and went thence oversea to St. Omer.
Additionally, Geirr Bassi [p. 10] gives the feminine given name
<Gy{dh}a>.
My complete translation edition of The Domesday Book does not give an
index of persons (only place names); however, the edition I have of
the text just for Dorset gives a side-by-side facsimile and
translation, in the section listing the Land of St. Stephen’s of Caen
(sorry, it isn’t clear what the actual page #s are -- I can scan them
in and send them along as necessary). I can’t reproduce the Latin
text in this font; the translation says:
LAND OF ST. STEPHEN’S OF CAEN [sic]
St. Stephen’s Church, Caen, holds FRAMPTON. [sic] Gytha held it
before 1066.
Judging from the Latin text on the preceding page, the Latin form of
the name is <Gida>.
The Reaney and Wilson docs for the byname are as given. I suspect
that the other docs are fine, but was not able to find the article
online. Is it in one of the KWHSS Symposium Proceedings (and if so,
which one)?
Can someone check the forms? On my monitor the cat is a kind of
bilious shade of greenish yellow.
I want to reblazon the cat as being “in chief”, but I think that might
imply that it is fully on the azure part of the field, instead of
(slightly) overlapping the line of division.
This is not particularly good style.
no conflicts found in the LoARs
2. Halldórr bíldr -- Argent, two Thor’s hammers in
saltire gules.
The Geirr Bassi docs for both name elements are as cited.
Originally, I had problems with the emblazon not coming up on the html
versions (both color and B&W) -- I got a little blue box with a
question mark inside of it instead of an image) ; clicking on the link
gets me an error message from Safari which says:
No file exists at “/D:/AEheralds/Letters/AE103/armory/CL-AE103-
Halldorrbildr.jpg”.
I drew this, so I more of less remember what the armory looks like,
but I don’t know if anyone else had this problem. (On the pdf file,
the image is fine, BTW, and as of 3/21/07 the problem appears to be
fixed in the html versions.
Artist’s note: the length of the hafts is somewhat longer than
standard for Thor’s hammers, but was done to both fill the space and
give the two heads enough room to be distinct and identifiable.
no conflicts found in the LoARs
3. Julianna Woolworth -- Argent, a sheep couchant sable, within a
bordure gules ermined argent.
The subsidiary docs for the given name are found at [URL:
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=31898&strquery=Wale,%20William#s10]
and {URL:
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=31893&strquery=Julianna],
respectively.
I may have found a cite for the submitted spelling of the given name
(ironically, from the same overall website; this one [URL:
http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.
asp?compid=38103&strquery=Julianna] is entitled: “HOUSES OF AUSTIN
CANONS: 10. PRIORY OF CHRISTCHURCH, TYWNEHAM”. It says in part:
On 12 November, 1214, the altar of the Holy Trinity, which was the
parochial altar in the nave, was dedicated by Walter, Bishop of
Whitherne
(1209-25).... On 7 December of the same year an altar was dedicated
by
the same bishop to the honour [sic] of St. John Baptist. The relics
placed
therein were exceedingly numerous, and included... bones of the
virgin
saints, Agnes, Alice, Lucy, Julianna [sic], Perpetua,
Margaret, Agatha,
Barbara, Beatrice and Martha.
Footnotes to this passage indicate that the source material is Cott.
MS, Tib. D. vi, pt. ii. f. 149 b, but it is unclear whether the
spellings have been normalized.
The online docs for the byname are as cited (wicked cool website,
BTW). I don’t have Bardsley, but Reaney and Wilson [p. 498]
corroborates Bardsley, listing the header form <Wollmer> as a
variant
of <Woolmer>, as well as -- on both that page and the next --
other
like shifts in spelling such as <Woller/Wooler> and
<Wollaston/Woolaston/
Wolston> (in fact, under the last there is a citation for
<William
Wolston [sic] of Wollaston>, dated to 1426.
On the color html version, the tinctures seem very pale and washed out
(pink and grey anyone?). Are the tinctures this bad on the original
forms? Both the current and previous Wreath have returned submissions
for tincture issues, and I’m concerned that this may face a similar
fate.
Because of the pale tincture of the bordure, the ermine spots are very
difficult to see. There maybe should be a few more of them -- this
looks like a bordure charged with eight ermine spots, rather than
truly ermined.
Otherwise, nice device.
no conflicts found in the LoARs
4. Maria Caterina da Rauvenna
The docs for all name elements are as cited.
According to maps I found on a website called Pickatrail, the (modern)
provinces of Ravenna and Venice are geographically fairly close to
each other [URL: http://www.
pickatrail.com/jupiter/location/europe/italy/ravenna.html] and [URL:
http://www.
pickatrail.com/jupiter/location/europe/italy/venice.html],
respectively.
5. Marion la rousse
The name docs are as cited. Note, however, that since there is no
byname cited for <Marion> in Colm Dubh, it is unclear as to the
gender of the name; the following name on the list is <Maronne [une
fame]>.
6. Niccola di Cristiano -- (badge) Per pale Or and sable, a Maltese
cross counterchanged.
Nice badge/armory!
clear of: Anselm da
Calabria (7/06 Lochac) -- Per pale Or and vert, a cross crosslet
counterchanged.
There is a CD for changing half the field tincture, and one for
changing half the tincture of the cross; there is probably also one
for the type of cross.
7. Serena Finn -- Azure,
a unicorn [sic] head couped argent, in chief three scimitars inverted
reversed Or.
The docs for the given name are as cited; note, however, that in the
introduction to the latter source cited, it says:
The names in these lists are from Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's
Montaillou:
Promised Land of Error , [sic] printed by Random House in
1978. Montaillou
was a village in Foix (now in the departement [sic] of Ariège).
The
names
are taken from inquisition records from the first quarter of the
14th century....
The people of Montaillou had some contact with Catalonia south
across the
Pyrenees, so some Catalan names may have crept into these lists.
Le Roy Ladurie wrote his book based on a modern French translation
of the
original Latin inquisition records. His source was Le
registre d'inquisition de
Jacques Fournier (Eveque de Pamiers), 1318-1325 , [sic]
translated and annotated
by Jean Duvernoy (Toulouse, private edition, 1966. Republished Paris
; New
York : Mouton, c1978). I have compared Le Roy Ladurie's book to
Duvernoy's
translation, and as far as I can tell, Le Roy Ladurie did not modify
the names
from Duvernoy's spellings. However, Duvernoy himself translated the
original
Latin names to modern French. Therefore, the spellings of names in
these lists
cannot be trusted.
I looked up the relevant LoAR (4/89 East) but it does not give any
information, only that the name <Aoife Finn> was registered.
While
the cited St. Gabriel report, as stated, “does not address whether
<Finn> would be the form for a woman”, the source for the report
appears to be ÓC&M, which says in part [p. 100, sn FINN}:
In the later middle ages, then name remained in use especially among
the
O Dempseys and the O Driscolls. Finn was also a female name but was
relatively uncommon.
I don’t have Bardsley, but the other docs for the byname are as cited.
The specific reference for the last citation is “Marriages from the
Heighington Registers (1570-1837)” [URL:
http://genuki.cs.ncl.ac.uk/Transcriptions/DUR/HEI.html].
There are no current rulings (as of the October
2006 LoAR) on the
combination of Provençal/Occitan with Gaelic; the combination of
English with either Anglicized Irish or Gaelic is one step from period
practice, as is the combination of French with either Anglicized Irish
or Gaelic. (There is, BTW, no such thing as “Celtic”, at least in
terms of a single language/culture).
This has the same tincture issues as in #3. In particular,
between the paleness of the field and the paleness of the scimitars,
the tincture of the latter on the color html is *barely* identifiable
as “Or” (they could just as easily have been blazoned as “argent” at a
quick glance). Additionally, they do not seem to be either palewise
or bend-sinisterwise, but rather somewhere in between (c.f. PIC-DIC,
fig. 719b, and turn the page upside down).
Reblazon the primary charge as “a unicorn’s
head”.
clear of Gabriele Parr
Pembroke (8/06 Trimaris) -- Azure mullety argent, a unicorn’s head
couped Or.
There is a CD for changing the tincture of the primary charge and at
least one for significant changes to the secondaries (type, number,
tincture, arrangement).
8. Yang SuGyong (name change from Ann of Thanet and device resub) --
Per pale gules and argent, a pair of wings conjoined in lure
counterchanged and on the honor point overall a trillium purpure
barbed vert.
The two websites relating to Items 1 and 2 do seem to indicate some
minimal knowledge and contact with Korea in *very* late period Europe
(however, the first site in particular is not especially well written,
and could use the services of a good copy editor in order to clean up
some grammar foo and general mediocre writing). It sounds as if
there was even less contact with Korea than with Japan, although
contact did exist.
I’m not sure that this documentation is adequately summarized. I’m
afraid that after about halfway through the Wikipedia article on
Korean names my eyes started to glaze over. In particular, while
probably interesting on some level, most of the information about
hanja and hangul seem to be extraneous at least for registration
purposes. All that really needed to have been said was there is
evidence that the name elements are found in period, and given the
various forms possible, based on the different transcription systems.
I presume that the comparison of romanized forms in Google searches
were for the purposes of checking for name conflicts, but I’m betting
that unless a specific person by that name were listed in
_Britannica_, they would not be important enough for the College of
Arms to protect.
Looking at the .pdf file of the old submission, I can see that there
were some serious artistic issues. While these do seem to have been
corrected, there are, as a result, new issues to consider.
On the color html version, the barbing on the trillium is practically
invisible (if I hadn’t read the blazon, I would not have known it was
even there). In addition, it isn’t entirely clear whether or not the
trillium *is* in the honor point, as references differ as to its
location: Parker [p. 468, sn Point] shows the honor point a little
further down; Woodward [p. 59, Fig. 15], von volborth [p. 12, fig.
106], and Brooke-Little [p. 167] show it roughly the same spot as on
the submission; and Friar [p. 143] shows it much higher on the field.
There is the added problem on whether the trillium is sufficiently
“overall”. A precedent from François’ tenure says:
[a fret surmounted by a badger statant ] [sic] An
overall charge should
lie mostly on the field. Here the badger lies almost entirely on
the fret.
This is not stylistically acceptable by long-standing precedent. [
Muirgheal
inghean Raghailligh mhic Seachnasaigh ,08/01 ,
[sic] R-Atenveldt] .
This is not particularly good style.
probably clear of: Rudiger Adler (7/06 Lochac) -- Per pale gules and
argent, a double-headed eagle within a double tressure counterchanged.
There is at least one CD for significant changes to the secondaries.
There should be one between the types of primary charge, especially if
the eagle’s wings are displayed (i.e., rather than displayed and
inverted).
9. Ysabeau Tiercelin -- Azure, a horse rampant and a bordure Or semy
of pommes.
The docs for both name elements are as cited.
Nice name!
The horse should have a bit of interior detailing to make it slightly
more identifiable.
Nice armory otherwise.
no conflicts found in the LoARs
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