[ANSTHRLD] New Award Discussion

Etienne de St. Amaranth star at ansteorra.org
Wed Feb 2 12:41:39 PST 2005


At 10:51 AM 2/2/2005, Countess Sara wrote:
>In a casual conversation with Ulsted a while back, he
>indicated that he had noted that same thing and liked
>the idea of continuing it ("Sable Talon" was one
>idea). I'm not sure if he mentioned it to Star or not,

His Majesty did use this example at Roundtable with me.  It is not "off my 
list" by any means.  I have not conflict checked it or even verified how a 
talon would appear in a badge yet.  A lot of discussions I have had since 
Roundtable have had a consistent theme that the use of a bird element would 
seem to heavily lean the award towards chivalric activities (Falcon, 
Centurion's Eagle) as opposed to the other marshallate activities.  (Though 
a Sable Hawk could arguably involve the equestrians or rapier community as 
"hawking" was popular in several cultures and equestrians and rapier era 
fighters participated.)  Siege and thrown weapons are the difficulty in 
trying to get a universal symbol, in many ways.  I have seen one Sable 
Falcon given to a siege engineer, so perhaps those are covered in the 
non-armigerous (though not often).

Let's us, the heralds, not forget what we often preach.  Armory and the 
symbols used were not "life on a shield" stories, they were symbols that 
meant the individual because they were that person's arms.  There may not 
be any one symbol that fully incorporates all of the disparate marshallate 
activities, let alone any new activities that develop in the next 25 
years.  The approach taken in an earlier email involving the boar was 
interesting to me.  In and of itself, a boar has little to do with combat 
arts but the meanings ascribed by the writer's source to the symbol (in 
period, the modern connotation is certainly worth noting) are similar to 
the heroic warrior ideal.  Perhaps a symbol that is only a symbol (whether 
talon, tower, boar, buckle, etc.) that comes to mean the valor of our 
warriors is sufficient.

Thoughts?

Etienne





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