[ANSTHRLD] Slot Machine?

[tmcd@panix.com]

Blaise de Cormeilles <blaise at scadian.net> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 09, 2003 at 09:55:27AM -0500, Tim McDaniel wrote:
> > There ARE a few unusual period coats that we would return for
> > non-period style (that's what the rule is called, so that's what we'd
> > have to cite), but I don't know of any simple royal arms in that
> > class.
> 
> (Paging Mortimer...)

Hmmm ... Certainly, Mortimer is a bitch and a half to blazon.
One period treatise said that the best way to blazon it is just as
"Mortimer".  The SCA Armorial has

    Mortimer, Earl of March.  Barry Or and azure, on a chief azure two
    palets between two gyrons Or and overall an escutcheon argent.

For those who aren't familiar with Mortimer, you can see a depiction
at <http://www.geocities.co.jp/Milano/7193/gif/m241a.gif>.  What
Mortimer *did* was have an inescutcheon with rays coming off, sort of,
except the rays are heraldic stripes.

In fact, Parker at
<http://www002.upp.so-net.ne.jp/saitou/parker/jpglosse.htm#Esquire>
has a couple of screens of different attempts at blazoning it.
(By the way, we don't use the term "esquire" in the SCA, except as a
synonym for "squire".  We just call those "gyrons".)

The SCA blazon and most of the real-world ones are underspecified: it
doesn't note that the top of the escutcheon is precisely along the
bottom of the chief, and it doesn't note that the bottom of the gyrons
hit the bottom line of the chief and touch the upper corners of the
shield.  (Well, usually, though Parker's depiction of Hogeley and a
Googlable image search for "mortimer earl" show depictions that
don't.)

But given the fame of Mortimer's arms, I suspect that Laurel would
register a submission along those lines and simply note the inadequacy
of the blazon (if even that were mentioned).  I'd support its
registration: the arms of an earl of March, one of the greatest of the
earldoms on the Welsh marches, would not be obscure in a lot of
medieval Europe, I suspect.

Daniel de Lincolia
-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd at panix.com; tmcd at us.ibm.com is my work address