[ANSTHRLD] A Spurtle
Coblaith Muimnech
Coblaith at sbcglobal.net
Sun Oct 17 21:41:43 PDT 2010
Jayme wrote:
> I have a gentleman who is just moving into Seawinds, who wants to
> register a spurtle.. . .
> Anybody have any insight on whether this is going to require a
> documentation of it's use in period heraldry to register or no?
Danihel de Lindo Colonia
> . . .if you can document period depictions in such a way that it's
> blazonable (if you see a picture and know of the item, you'll say
> "spurtle") and reproducable (to oversimplify, if you see "spurtle"
> in a blazon, you'll draw something like someone else's notion of
> "spurtle"), then it will not require documentation of its use in
> period heraldry.
The Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, s.n. "Spurtill, Spurtle"
<http://www.dsl.ac.uk/getent4.php?
plen=924&startset=58390491&dtext=dost>, offers two late-16th-century
quotes containing "spurtill" and explains that the term derives from
a late Middle English or Early Modern English word related to
"spatula". The entry makes it clear that there was some sort of
cooking instrument that went by that name in period, but gives the
impression that it probably wasn't cylindrical, like the typical
modern spurtle, but. . .well, spatulate. So, probably not what
your client's picturing, and problematic from a "blazonability"
perspective, since most readers would likely interpret "spurtle" as
"cylindrical potstick".
That said, whether period spurtles turn out to have been spatulate,
cylindrical, or both, I'd be concerned about identifiability. How
would you draw one so that it didn't look like a dagger, a sword
beater, or a bourdon?
Coblaith Muimnech
<mailto:Coblaith at sbcglobal.net>
<http://coblaith.net>
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