The Principality of Hell--NOT!

[dennis grace]

Daniel de Lincoln wrote:
>Lest I be thought of as a right humourless barstard, I can produce
>references that I have a sense of humor.  Granted, it tends towards
>low puns (e.g., the worst Shakespear pun in the world), and given my
>interests, to heraldic humor.  (I can document "Bevis Butthead" pretty
>well, for instance.  I drew up the name and badge for "Lance Assman",
>"[Fieldless] A faggot flaming proper.", which has a proper faggot
>flaming properly.)


Talk about bad taste.  A few folk bandying about a name like "Hell" for a
part of the country drenched in heat three-quarters of the year is an apt
thread of humor, SCA or mundane, and certainly not insulting to anyone's
person, either specifically or in general.

If you style yourself a herald, a bandier-about of words, you set yourself
up as an authority on words and word-usage, and, in the best SCA tradition
(as it should be everywhere), rights of authority necessitate and demand
responsibility.  Do you have any idea how insulting the last part of your
post sounds?  Maybe you meant no insult, maybe the heraldic jargon grew a
life of its own, but I would suggest a bit more thought before throwing
words through the ether that have great potential for harm.

Mst. Aquilanne
Dennis G. Grace
Postmodern Medievalist
Division of Rhetoric and Composition
Department of English
University of Texas at Austin
amazing at mail.utexas.edu
___________________

Baro, metetz en guatge                    |  Lords, pawn your castles,
Chastels e vilas e ciutatz                |  your towns and cities.
Enanz qu'usquecs no'us guerreiatz         |  Before you're beat to the draw,
                                                    draw your swords.

                   -- Bertran de Born (a really fun Viscount)