Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 609

Academy of Saint Gabriel Report 609

This report is available at http://www.s-gabriel.org/609

Some of the Academy's early reports contain errors that we haven't yet corrected. Please use it with caution.

Greetings from the Academy of St. Gabriel!

Here is the information we have found about your proposed 14th century Scottish arms.

You asked whether the arms "Per chevron Or and vert, on a chief vert a ram's head guardant, three thistles proper seeded Or" would be a good choice.

Your blazon is unclear. Where are the thistles? What part of them is gold? Our guess is that the ram's head lies on the chief and the thistles lie in the space between the chief and the "per chevron" division. If we're wrong, please let us know. Here's a sketch of what we have in mind:

Arms were used widely in the Scottish lowlands in the 14th century, but far less frequently in the highlands. This difference reflected a growing cultural division between the Scots-speaking Lowlands and the Gaelic-speaking Highlands. (Scots was a language closely related to contemporary English.)

Whether your persona would have used arms and what sort of arms he would have used depends very heavily on where he lived. Normally we could infer that information from your name, since Gaelic and Scots names were also quite different. Unfortunately, your name is a mixture of the two a Gaelic patronymic byname. Your arms are closer to the Lowland style (which was quite similar to English armory at the same period); Highland arms were very different, quite foreign to the heraldic style that predominated in western Europe. Therefore, for the rest of this letter we are going to assume that you are interested in Lowland armory. If you'd like to learn more about Highland armory or to discuss your name, write us again.

Some of the features of your arms are appropriate to the 14th century Lowlands, but others are not. We'll discuss all the details and then suggest some ways to choose arms that better fit your persona.

The color combination, green and gold, is rare but not unheard of. This combination was actually rare just about everywhere in medieval Europe, and it is not especially unusual for the Scottish Lowlands. But divided fields with charges on them are not particular common in Scotland in any period.

Animal's heads are reasonably common in 14th century Scots armory. We have not seen an example of a ram's head, but we have seen a ram. (1) Thistles, on the other hand, are unknown in Scottish arms of this period. The thistle was a personal badge of the king of Scotland, not a generic Scottish insignia. Although we have seen an isolated use of the thistle in 1564, it was not used in Scottish arms until the next century, and then only as a particular mark of royal favor. (2) You should, therefore, avoid thistles.

Your design as a whole is rather cluttered. The thistles are squeezed into the small space between the chief and the field division, while the lower part of the field is empty. It would be more typical of arms of your period for the three charges to be placed "two and one", i.e. one each in the upper left, upper right, and lower portions of the field, balanced around the "per chevron" division.

There are several ways to choose arms that better fit your persona. If you want arms that say "I am a member of Clan MacLeod", or "I am a close relative of the chief of Clan MacLeod," then you could base your arms on the period arms of the chief of Clan MacLeod, namely, Or a fiery mountain proper.

On the other hand, If you want to say "I am a vassal of the Earl of Fife", then you could design arms that allude to the Earl's heraldry. If you want to say "I live in Annandale", there are ways to do that, too. These possibilities are too complicated for us to describe in a single letter, so let us know if you're interested in them and let us know more details about your persona.

On the other hand, if you want to design a new set of arms in the style of the 14th century Lowlands, without any other historical reference, we can suggest a few possibilities:

We hope that this letter has been somewhat helpful to you. If you would clarify these matters for us, we can offer further assistance.

Arval d'Espas Nord, Zenobia Naphtali, Effric neyn Kenyeoch vc Ralte and Walraven van Nijmegen contributed to this letter.

In Service,

Giulietta da Venezia
Academy of St. Gabriel

  1. R.R. Stodart, "Scottish Arms," (Vol. I-II), William Paterson, Edinburgh, 1981.
  2. C.J. Burnett, "The Thistle as a Symbol," Emblems of Scotland, Heraldry Society of Scotland, 1997.