[Bards] Symbology

Jay Rudin rudin at ev1.net
Mon Apr 21 09:17:56 PDT 2003


Iain wrote:

>         A friend of mine asked recently if there was a fairly universal
> symbol, just for bards. I presume he is thinking in terms of making
> prizes for competitions. I told him that the harp is fairly universally
> accepted in the SCA, but of course it is hardly universal to the personae
> we play (Russian? Japanese? Greek?). Any suggestions?

There's no universal symbol known to all bards, scops, skalds, jongleurs,
minnenzingerin, minstrels, playwrights, poets, story-tellers and actors in
all pre-seventeenth century cultures.

However, heraldry, became, by the high middle ages, a nearly universal
language.

The Ansteorran College of Bards has a registered badge, "Or, an Ansteorran
Star within a harp frame sable", usable by an Ansteorran bard who chooses
to.  (That's a yellow or gold field, with an unstung harp surrounding the
classic Ansteorran black star.  Technically, I should have called it a
"mullet of five greater and five lesser points sable", but only the heralds
recognize that, while all Ansteorrans know what an Ansteorran Star is.)

Robin of Gilwell / Jay Rudin




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