heraldy

[Jennifer Carlson]

I agree with Lady Estrill: up here in the north, local heralds are expected
to be able to do it all.  I speak from my personal experience.  When I first
became the pursuivant for Northkeep, all I knew was how to blazon and check
for conflict.  My predecessor dumped all the books and files on me and went
off to seminary, and I suddenly found out that there was more expected of
me than just keeping the paperwork.  My herald's guidebook informed me that
I was responsible for submissions, conflict checking, name research, teaching,
field heralding, court heralding, wake-up calls, et cetera.  It was a lot
more than I thought I had signed on for.  

Fortunately for me, Da'ud (Star Principal at the time) didn't mind my calling
him every time I had a question, and was patient and willing to walk me
through everything.  And I did all right until time to do my first court: it
was our first Castellan tournament, the Crown was there, and I was in a nervous
fit: I don't mind speaking in public, as anyone who knows me can attest :), but
I hadn't the faintest idea of how to put a court together, and no one had ever
taken the time to teach me.  Much to my relief, Baron Hossein had come along
as the royal herald, and he showed me what to do; but had he not been there,
I'd have been lost.

There's a reason why heralds in the north tend to drop out of it: we burn out
quickly.  The way I see it is this: in any group of people, you are going to
have only a small percentage who are interested in heraldry.  The larger your
group, the more you will have.  The more you have, the more you can divvy up
the burden and support each other, and the less burnout you have.

When I was herald, I had 6 people total who were heraldically inclined: myself,
Lady Livia (name expert), Lord Kevin Michael Keary (excellent book herald),
Lord Alaric (my predecessor who had come back from seminary when his parents died), and two brothers who loved heraldry but who were too busy to participate in
the SCA much.  I burned out, became a Laurel (no connection between the two) and
the SCA much.  I burned out, became a Laurel (no connection between the two) andthese days find myself so busy with other things that heraldry takes the back
seat, and only occasionally do I find time to help someone with designing a
device or badge.  Lady Livia is now in graduate school and working two jobs and
only rarely gets to do name research any more.  Lord Kevin has for three years
been the Khan of the Great Dark Horde and is up to his eyeballs in that job.
My predecessor who had come back from seminary went back to seminary and is living in another state.  And the two brothers have dropped off the face of the
earth.  The result is that Northkeep's current herald is in the same boat I 
was in when I started: pretty much having to do it all by herself.  I help some
when I can, but not near enough.

I know that in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, where you can't swing a dead cat with-
out hitting a herald, there seems to be a more relaxed feeling about heraldry:
you have a cadre of people with different skills to call upon: design, art,
court, field, conflict, name research, what have you, and these folks do not
appear to have the burnout rate that we do in the north.

I'm not sure that there's really any solution.  Trying to get people interested
in heraldry is sucessful only to a limited extent, and that only seems to be
tapping those who were heraldically inclined in the first place.  I'll probably
wind up being a group herald again some time in the future, because the post
is required for group status.  In fact, I imagine that if the rules didn't
require a group to have a herald, many would not.  If you look at Moonschadowe,
their herald is also the Kingdom Minister of Children:  don't you think the
lady has enough to do in her kingdom office?  But the rules say a shire has
to have a herald, so she's stretching herself to cover that, too.

Well, this post of mine has rambled enough (I really shouldn't compose at the
keyboard), but I'll finish with this:  as long as the populations of the 
northern groups stay relatively small, our heralds will be forced to be
"holistic" heralds, and will suffer from a higher burnout rate.

Yours in service<

Dunstana Talana the Violet
burned out old Pursuivant