Unto Lord Dagonell Collingwood, Garnet Herald of Æthelmearc, does Lord Cadell Blaidd du send greetings.
Below, please find my comments on Æthelmearc Internal Letter of Intent #AE46. Please note that items with which I had no concerns are not listed.
-The device, unfortunately, runs afoul of RfS XI.4 (Arms of Pretense), "[Inescutcheons, lozenges, or other geometric charges] may not contain an ordinary that terminates at the edge, or more than one charge."
-Name registered April 2000.
-This motif appears several times in Siebmacher (Masbach, p. 122; Raitenbach, p. 128; Neydberg, p. 172).
-Reblazon suggestion: "Purpure, on a bend argent, three decrescents palewise gules."
-Device: If there's no miniature enclosed, shouldn't the device submission be returned?
-With all due respect, I think Garnet is in the wrong on this issue. Because Hector's device is a neutral field, the pear could theoretically be in the center of the field; therefore, I count one CD for changing the field and one for a non-forced change of position. After all, if Hector's pear could not have been in the center of the field, it wouldn't have to be blazoned "in base."
-Emilia: I can find no evidence of "Emilia" as a historical name, although I admit my resources are somewhat limited. Master Da'ud has set several precedents about the registration of fictional names from Shakespeare, including "[changing the byname Capulet] Shakespeare's use of Capulet is insufficient to establish it as an actual name."(9/94). Because "Othello" was published post-1600, if we were to register this name at all, I would suggest making it "SCA-compatible Italian," and thus one "weirdness."
-O'Madagain: is cited in Woulfe as "an offshoot of O'Madden of Co. Galway who settled in the 16th century in Clare and Limerick." MacLysaght gives an almost identical citation.
-Summary (Name): I believe that combining an Italian given name and an Irish patronymic should count as a weirdness. Combining that with the SCA-compatibility argument for "Emilia" given above, I submit that either this name is unregisterable due to lack of documentation for "Emilia," or it is unregisterable due to having two "weirdnesses." Please note that everything said so far is null and void if a herald with better references than mine finds a period citation for "Emilia."
-Device: Does this run afoul of the "long, thin object counterchanged over the line of division" rule-of-thumb? If it were only one cross, I wouldn't complain, as the cross would be big enough not to raise the issue. But with 5, the crosses have to be small enough to fit 5 on the field, and that's small enough to raise the red flag in my brain.
-Name registered 1/2000.
-Name: Mills also documents several places with the "Hart-" element, several to 1086. Mills also documents the "-stone" element to the same year. My only question is, would a stone be frequented by harts & stags?
-Reblazon suggestion: "Azure, in bend four horseshoes inverted between in bend sinister two four-leaf clovers, a bordure Or."
-Name: I question the "Southold" Anglicized form. According to Mills, "Sudholda" is already English from the OE suth+hold, with "Southolt" being the modernized form. I would suggest submitting it as "Southolt."
-Device: I see several problems with this device. First, if the charges are gryphons, there is no "proper" for gryphons, making the blazon incorrect. Second, if the charges are eagles, "proper" for eagles isn't brown, it's sable. Third, "light brown" (as the colored emblazon is described by Garnet) is usually reblazoned to "Or," making the secondary charges not only color-on-color, but Or-on-Or.
-As a note, the Herald of Record should be Avelina Keyes. That makes this a Pennsic submission, since Avelina is a Herald from the Barony of the Bridge in the East Kingdom who was present at Herald's Point for part of Pennsic.