Mathghamhain – Page 21 – Techniques of Digital Heraldry

Traceable Art at Pennsic

The Book of Traceable Heraldic Art made its premier appearance at Pennsic’s Heralds’ Point art tent this year.

I brought printouts of the full thousand-plus page collection with me, which was sleeved into page protectors by the volunteers at the point. While the new collection is not yet complete enough to retire the old Pennsic Traceable Art book, I was pleased to see that it was of practical use for many of the hundreds of armory submissions generated this year.

Throughout the week of activity, the team in the art tent generated useful notes about areas that needed more work, and as the Point was closing up, Signora Beatrice Domenici della Campana and Master Kryss Kostarev took several hours of their time to sit with me and systematically work through the first 430 pages identifying designs which needed correction or could be safely omitted from the version to be used on site next year.

I look forward to incorporating that feedback and continuing to expand the collection over the coming year.

Names and Arms for Sara and Giuseppe Sala di Paruta

Sara and Giuseppe live in our neighboring barony of Dragonship Haven. Her name and arms had been registered but she wanted to tweak them, while his were being registered for the first time.

Per pale sable and vert, a poodle salient contourny Or, collared and langued gules, and in sinister canton a bezant.

Sara already had similar arms registered, but with a talbot sejant, which she wanted to swap for a poodle salient.

Poodles are documented as period, being known from at least the fifteenth century. The poodle illustration is adapted from the submissions of Briana Heron of Caid, using the period shearing for water dogs without ornamental pompoms.

Per pale sable and vert, two sprigs of rue and a covered salt-cellar shedding salt Or.

Giuseppe wanted his arms to share a common field with his wife’s, but wasn’t sure what charges it should bear.

After a bit of brainstorming, I came up with a cant on the household name “Salaparuta” or “Sala di Paruta” using the medieval name for a covered salt shaker, and the Italian/Latin word for common rue: “above a salte, a pair of rutas.”

Canting arms, using rebuses, puns, and alliteration, were very common in medieval heraldry, being well adapted to a society with low literacy but a taste for symbolism and wordplay.

Sara Sala di Paruta

Sara is an Italian form of the common female name Sarah, attested in Sicily in the 15th C.

S.n. Sara, “… Ma può risalire direttamente alla forma ebraica Sārāh; cfr. Sara mulier iudea uxor quondam Buxacce, a.1400.” Found in “Dizionario Onomastico della Sicilia”, Caracausi, G., 1994, Palermo. Translation by Maridonna Benvenuti: “But it can be directly traced to the Jewish Sārāh form; cfr. Sara mulier iudea uxor quondam Buxacce, year 1400.”

SENA Appendix A states that Italian names may take an unmarked locative byname. Sala di Paruta was the medieval name of a village and associated castle in Sicily that is currently known as Salaparuta.

Giuseppe Sala di Paruta

Giuseppe is an Italian form of the common male name Joseph, attested as the name of a Sicilian living in Rome during the 16th C.

“Giuseppe Sicilano” is one of many men named Giuseppe listed in “Names of Jews in Rome In the 1550’s” by Yehoshua ben Haim haYerushalmi, drawn from Nota Ebrei, a 16th C. rabbinical archive.

Sala di Paruta

Sala di Paruta was the name of a village and an associated castle in medieval Sicily.

When the first tower of the castle was built in 1296, it and the village were known as “Sala Della Donna” (“Hall of the Lady”). The castle became the seat of a barony known as Baronia Sala Della Donna (“Barony of the Hall of the Lady”).

In 1462 it became the feudal lands of the Paruta family, and shortly after 1500 they renamed the castle and the associated barony “Sala di Paruta” (“Hall of the Parutas”).

In 1561, following the death of Giovanni Matteo Paruta, who had been Baron of Sala di Paruta, his daughter and only heir, Fiammetta Paruta, wed Giuseppe Alliata, who became Baron Sala di Paruta. (Their son was later named Duke Sala di Paruta.)

Throughout this period, the village that surrounded the castle was known by the same name, Sala di Paruta, but during the eighteenth century, the name was combined into a single word, “Salaparuta”, which is its modern name.

Below are three references in history books attesting to the existence of the territory, castle, and/or barony named Sala di Paruta.

Pervenuta veidesi finalmente questa gran Baronia in potere di Giolamo Paruta, il quale nel 1503, accrebbe di novelle fabbriche l’Abitato della vassalla Popolazione esistente in quella, che oltre più d’ un secolo traeva la fua forma (a: Amico Lexic. Topograph., Sic. Vol Mazar. V. Sala Paruta), e però ove fi disse nella mia Sicilia Nobile, essere stata ella edificata da Antonio Paruta nel 1507, fu uno de i sbagli, che mi fece prendere l’ autore genealogico, da cui ne fu cavata la notizia (b: Mugnos Fam. Paruta t. 3. f. 15. ma il millesimo citato del 1507, che volea dire 1503, fu error di stampa, poiché nel mio manuseritto originale 1503. cosi segnato leggesi.) Dalla Famiglia di Paruta cominició ad appellarsi la detta Terra col novello nome di Sala di Paruta, suppressovi l’antico di Sala di Madonna Alvira, e dalli Signori di Paruta fece passaggio ne i Signori Agliati.

— From “Della Sicilia Nobile“, by Francesco Maria Emanuele e Gaetani, 1775, p 263, citing “Lexicon Topographicum Siculum”, by Vito Amico, 1759.

English translation of key passage: “From [1503] the Paruta family began to call this land by the new name Paruta Hall, dropping the old name Hall of Lady Alvira…”

Alvira Giano Andrea suo primogenito, che a’investi Onofrio ed avo dell’ultima dei Paruta, la Fiammetta, con la quale passava di direitto nel 1561 nella casa Alliata la baronia sposando essa Fiammetta un Giuseppe Alliata: la quale baronia già sotto di Girolamo dopo il 1507 aveva preso nome di Sala di Paruta, o Salae Parutarum, sostituito al primo di Sala donne o Sala di Madona Alvira.

— From “Archivio Storico Siciliano“, published by “Scoieta Siciliana Per La Storia Patria” with “Scuola di paleografia di Palermo”, 1889, p 272.

English translation of key passage: “The barony had already under Girolomo from 1507 taken the name of Paruta Hall, or Salae Parutarum, replacing the earlier Hall of the Lady or Hall of Lady Alvira.”

Giuseppe Alliata… Sposó Donna Fiammetta Paruta, figlia di Giovanni Matteo, Barone della Sala di Paruta. Dotali in Notar Giacomo Scavuzzo di Palermo, li 6 maggio 1561; il matrimoni fu celebrato nela Parrocchia di San Giacomo la Marina di Palermo, li 8 successivo.

— From “The History of Feuds and Noble Titles of Sicily From Their Origins To Our Days, Volume Nine”, by Francesco San Martino De Spucches and Mario Gregorio, 1940, p. 292.

English translation: “Giuseppe Alliata… Wed Lady Fiammetta Paruta, daughter of Giovanni Matteo, Baron of Paruta Hall. Dowry recorded by Giacomo Scavuzzo of Palermo, May 6, 1561; the wedding was celebrated in the Parish of St. James the Mariner of Palermo on the 8th.”

Name and Arms for Lady Angelica di Nova Lipa

Lady Angelica is an established member of the society, serving as the chatelaine of the Canton of Whyt Whey, but had never registered her name or arms, an oversight I was pleased to help correct.

Gules, eight fleurs de lys in annulo Or.

In our first round of consultation, Angelica identified red and gold as her preferred colors, and the Florentine fleur de lys as her desired primary charge, but pinning down the optimum arrangement required multiple iterations before this design emerged as the favorite.

Angelica di Nova Lipa is the name of a Northern Italian woman during the Renaissance whose family hails from the Slavic village of “New Linden” on the other side of the Adriatic Sea.

Angelica appears as a woman’s name in many parts of Europe during the late medieval period, including in northern Italy and adjacent areas of central Europe.

“Angelica” is a Florentine woman’s name dated to 1427. (In “A Listing of all Women’s Given Names from the Condado Section of the Florence Catasto of 1427” by Juliana de Luna.)

“Angelica” is a Roman woman’s name dated to 1527. (On p. 87 in “Sac de Rome,” by Jacques Bonaparte, 1830. Image)

“Angelica” is a Venetian woman’s name dated to 1615. (In “Names from Sixteenth Century Venice” by Juliana de Luna.)

“Angelica” is a Hungarian woman’s name dated to 1230/1356. (In “Nıi neveink az Árpád-korban” by Edina V. Jurkó, at University of Debrecen’s Department of Hungarian Linguistics.)

di <placename> is a rare but attested form for northern Italian names. (SENA Appendix A states “Locative bynames in the northern and central areas normally take the form da X, but de X and di X are rarely found.”)

Italian and South Slavic name elements may be used together for the period of 1100-1600, according to SENA Appendix C.

Nova Lipa is a village between Vinica and Črnomelj in the White Carniola region, adjacent to the historic Venetian province of Istria, now part of modern Slovenia. In the Slovene language, the name means “new linden” (like the tree) and is distinguished from Stara Lipa (“old linden”), another village centered one mile to the north. (There are also paired adjacent villages named Nova Lipa and Stara Lipa a hundred miles to the east, in modern Croatia.)

While we haven’t been able to find a period source that refers to the village by this exact name prior to 1600, we believe it has been continuously occupied for more than a thousand years, and has been known by this name for more than four hundred years, as shown below.

The area of the village has been inhabited for thousands of years, and was previously the location of a Roman-era settlement. (Archeological site identified in 2006; Image.)

The area of Nova Lipa and Stara Lipa are listed together in fourteenth and fifteenth-century German-language texts as Linten, Linden, Lindenn, Lynden, or Lindenn, with references such as “dacz der Linten”, 1334, and “czu der Lindenn,” 1463, both found under the heading “Nova Lipa, pri Vinici v Beli krajini” (or in English, “Nova Lipa, near Vinica in White Carniola”), in “Historična topografija Kranjske (do 1500)” by Miha Kosi, Matjaž Bizjak, Miha Seručnik, and Jurij Šilc, at the Milka Kosa Historical Institute. (Image)

The linkage of these historical listings to the modern location of Nova Lipa is justified by an accompanying note: “Lokalizacija glede na [Urb. Nemškega viteškega reda, f. 216] iz 1490, kjer gre očitno za Staro in Novo Lipo” (or in English, “located via page 216 of the ‘Estate Records of the Teutonic Knights of 1490,’ where it is clearly for Stara Lipa and Nova Lipa”), citing “Urbar Nemškega viteškega reda za posest v okolici Ljubljane, Metlike, Črnomlja in Velike Nedelje 1490,” Codex 164 at the Central Archive of the Teutonic Knights in Vienna, which provides a listing of properties owned by Teutonic Knights in the vicinity of Črnomelj.

These listings of Linden are recorded in German, the language of the ruling Habsburg family and other elites, but local farmers in the fourteenth century would have spoken a Slavic language, a predecessor of modern Slovene, in which the village name would have been “Lipa.” For example “de Lipa” appears as a locative byname for numerous Czech men in 1310–1404. (Including “Heinrecus de Lipa 1383-1386” p. 43, and “Wenceslaus pernář de Lipa 1404” p.171 in “Registrik jmen osobnich”, a registry of personal names, by Wacslaw Wladiwoj Tomek, 1875; Image, Image.)

Although all of the residences in the area were originally considered to be a single village, some of the homes eventually formed a separate cluster on the southern side of the valley as residents shifted buildings to the hillsides to preserve open land for farming. (A sociological survey of patterns of town organization in the local area states that “Vas Nova Lipa (Bela krajina) je zato, da bi se ohranila rodovitna zemlja v bližnjem podolju, pomaknjena na višji, močno vrtačast svet, kjer hiše stojijo med vrtačami ali tik ob njih.” or in English, “New Lipa village (White Carniola), in order to maintain fertile soil in a nearby valley, moved higher, to an area of karst depressions where houses stand between sinkholes or adjacent to them.” In “Morfologija Vaških Naselij v Sloveniji” by Vladimir Drozg, 1995; Image.)

This southern group of buildings was soon recognized as a distinct place known as “Nova Lipa,” growing large enough by the 1600s to justify construction of its own church, the “Nova Lipa Church of the Holy Spirit.” (“Nova Lipa Cerkev sv. Duha,” dated to the 17th century by the Slovenian Cultural Ministry; Image.)

Although we do not have an exact date for the church’s construction, the village would have existed for a number of years prior to the building of the church, as churches were only erected in established population centers. Dr. Miha Kosi, a Slovenian historian with expertise in medieval geography of the region, believes the village was formed prior to 1600, during the Renaissance period: “When the village was divided, i.e. Nova Lipa was established, I don’t know, but obviously only after the middle ages, but before 17th c. (the building of the church of Holy Spirit).” (Personal communication, June 2017; Image.)

Intellectual Property Rights In Branch Armory

An interesting point came up as part of the recent discussion of copyright and armorial registrations: what rights does the SCA as an institution have with regards to the images and designs used in devices and branches?

The question was triggered by an element of the Society’s rules found in section XII of the SCA’s “Corporate Policies” document, which is inexplicably difficult to locate online, but which can be found in a revision markup for changes made in 2013.

XII. POLICY ON SERVICE MARKS
The names (group and award/order) and armory (devices and badges) registered by Laurel to the SCA or to branches are to be considered service marks of the SCA. This recognition is to formally recognize these marks and our use of them to the purpose the US Patent and Trademark Office terms “collective marks.”

(This clause appears to date from the first quarterly BOD meeting of 2005. The same phrasing also appears in the SCA’s Social Media Policy.)

Due to what seems to be a good-faith misunderstanding, some people seem to have misinterpreted this issue in a way that suggests that the SCA, Inc.’s central organization in Milpitas, sometimes referred to as the “Corporate Office,” owns the copyright to all armory registrations, e.g. to the artwork submitted via OSCAR for devices and badges, such that permission from that office would allow someone to use that artwork in a commercial venture, or conversely that permission from that office would be required before someone could commission an artisan to create a work that incorporated their own personal arms.

In short, none of that appears to be correct.

It may seem surprising that the service mark and copyright for a particular image belong to two separate entities, but they come from separate areas of law.

A service mark is like a trademark, but for services as opposed to products. Categorizing the arms of the society and its branches as service marks provides the society with institutional power to object if someone else uses them in a way that would trade upon the society’s reputation.

On the other hand, copyright is a protection for the creator of a specific embodiment of an original creative endeavor. In the United States and other countries which are signatories to the Berne Convention, all eligible works are immediately covered by copyright without any registration requirement, so if you draw something, other people can not distribute or sell copies of it without your permission.

For example, if a for-profit company decided they were going to run a “Middle Kingdom Renaissance Fair” and printed up advertisements with the Middle Kingdom’s arms, the SCA corporate office could file a legal action against them on service-mark grounds, even if there was no copyright infringement because that company had drawn their own illustration of the dragon featured in the Middle’s arms.

On the other hand, if the SCA corporate office grants a private leather-working business a license to sell belts imprinted with the arms of all of the kingdoms, that only covers the service-mark claims, and means the business has permission to create and reproduce their own illustrations of those designs — it does not mean the business can simply copy the branch arms out of OSCAR or from the kingdom websites without seeking permission to do so from whomever originally illustrated each of those images.

The service-mark claim limits third parties from using branch arms, but it doesn’t create a restriction on SCA branches themselves using those designs (including those of other branches) or commissioning works from artisans, because as stated in the Social Media Policy:

4.c.ii. Kingdoms, principalities, regions, baronies, cantons, shires, etc. are all part of SCA, Inc. are entitled to use SCA trademarks and service marks without limit.

The service-mark claim does not appear to interfere with common situations in which individuals incorporate branch badges into their heraldic banners and similar displays, both because the branches typically have specifically granted permission to their populace to do so, and because those individuals are not at risk of passing off a product or service as an official SCA offering.

And as one would expect, none of this applies to individual armory, as noted in the Social Media Policy:

4.c.vi. Nothing here is meant to limit the use of individual badges or arms, which of course, belong to the individual member.

As with the last post, all of the above should be read with the knowledge that I am not a lawyer, and none of this should be taken as legal guidance — I’m just attempting to describe a somewhat-obscure issue as best I understand it.

If I’ve misinterpreted something, please let me know, and if there’s a clearer description of this topic posted somewhere else, I’d love to hear about it!

Copying Heraldic Art from OSCAR

I recently asked a group of heralds what the conventions were on copying heraldic art from OSCAR for re-use in other submissions, and thought it would be useful to write up some notes on the subject here for future reference.

Copying elements from previous submissions to use as clip art when creating new armory is not uncommon. While some heralds are great freehand illustrators, others are not (myself included), and being able to pull charges from an existing image and repurpose them allows those folks to assemble good-looking submissions for the registrants they are assisting.

This practice is widespread and I don’t know of any cases where someone has objected to their art being reused in this way. If you’re one of the many heralds who does this, please don’t take my commentary as a criticism or as pressure to do things differently

However, there is no formal license to do this, and legally each piece of art remains under the copyright of its original creator except where individual or blanket permission is granted for reuse. (Some earlier versions of the armory submission forms included a clause granting permission for use within the society, but the current ones do not.)

[Update, June 20]: The “Laurel v2.0” generation of forms, circa 2006, include the message “I understand that with my submission I automatically give permission for the Society for Creative Anachronism to use my artwork and armory for any and all internal heraldic and scribal purposes.” The “Laurel v3.0” forms, circa 2016, omit this language.

Writing to the original submitter and requesting permission seems like it would solve this problem, but this can be challenging because OSCAR does not expose the registrants’ contact information (sometimes Facebook searches or friend-of-a-friend inquiries will do the trick), and in some cases the registrant may not even know who created the artwork in the first place.

There are several libraries of heraldic images that do grant general permission for use in creating armory for the SCA without special arrangement or attribution, including Bruce Draconarius’s PicDic, Viking Answer Lady’s SVG Images for Heralds, Ailis Linne’s Pennsic Traceable Art book, and my own Book of Traceable Heraldic Art, but none of them is exhaustive enough to contain every possible charge in ever allowable position and style.

Note that all of the above presumes you are creating heraldry or artistic displays for non-commercial use within the society — if you plan to sell products with these images, use them for your business logo, or any other kind of commercial use you really must get in touch with the original creator and negotiate specific permission or you are opening yourself to both civil and criminal liability.

With all that said, finding several different examples of a charge from OSCAR, bringing them all to someone with a good hand, and asking them to draw something in the same vein should be safe as long as they’re using the material for inspiration and not directly tracing or copying them. Direct tracing of period illustrations or no-longer copyrighted armorial texts also shouldn’t create any problems, although you will need to verify that the style is compatible with current society practice.

(And of course, although it should go without saying, I am not a lawyer, and the above should not be taken as legal guidance.)

Badge for Lady Beatrice della Rocca

Lady Beatrice selected her badge in consultation with Erich Gutermuth, the deputy herald for Whyt Whey, and I was pleased to be able to assist them with the registration process.

A roundel counter-vair.

This design raised an interesting corner case where two of the SCA’s heraldic rules intersect:

Firstly, longstanding precedent holds that you can’t register a fieldless badge consisting of a shape which is a standard form for heraldic display, such as an escutcheon, billet, or roundel. The reason for this rule is that allowing such registrations would create the possibility for confusion; for example, when viewing a black and white square, one might wonder “is this a delf per pale sable and argent, or is it simple per pale sable and argent displayed on a rectangular object?”

Secondly, SENA A.3.E.3. states that you can’t register an undivided field such as simply “counter-vair” as that would be too simple; all registrations need to contain at least a charge or a field division.

Conveniently in this case those two rules work together in Beatrice’s favor: because you could not register an undivided, uncharged field of counter-vair, there is no potential for confusion: the image above can only legitimately be interpreted as a roundel counter-vair.

This ruling was described in the April 2002 LoAR:

We do not register fieldless badges which appear to be independent forms of armorial display. Charges such as lozenges, billets, and roundels are all both standard heraldic charges and “shield shapes” for armorial display. The SCA has never protected armory consisting of plain tinctures… If we do not protect, and have never protected, the arms Or, we should not be concerned about the possible appearance of a display of Or by using a single lozenge Or as a fieldless badge. … Therefore, a “shield shape” which is also a standard heraldic charge will be acceptable as as a fieldless badge in a plain tincture…

As all of the vairs are considered a single tincture, this badge should be registrable.

A Geographic History Of The East Kingdom

In AS XXIV (early 1990), Lord Richard the Poor assembled a collection of maps setting forth the growth and evolution of the SCA branches that make up the East Kingdom. Covering two decades, the maps provide a visual reference for the kingdom’s growth from a few isolated groups in New York and Boston to dozens of baronies, cantons, and shires covering the region.

Originally hand-drawn and typeset in the days of dot-matrix printers, the book had fallen out of circulation with only a single copy available online, on the Æthelmark history web site. With Lord Richard’s permission, I am making the original work available for download here (45 MB PDF) and have converted it to a more web-accessible form.

Heraldic Registrations of the Canton of Brokenbridge

Brokenbridge is Østgarđr’s youngest canton, corresponding to Brooklyn, or King’s County.

Canton of Brokenbridge

The canton’s name was submitted in March 2006, and accepted in September.

The name is believed to reference one of the canton’s most iconic landmarks, the Brooklyn Bridge.

The documentation provides Old English sources for the two name elements:

Broken – from OE brocen “broken, broken up, uneven” (A.H. Smith, English Place-Name Elements A-IW) p. 52. Ex. Brokenborough (Brochenborge 1086), from Ekwall p. 68.

Bridge – from OE brycg “a bridge.” (see A.H. Smith above, p. 54). Ex. – Tonbridge (Tonebridge, 1086), Stalbridge (Staplebrig, 1086) from Ekwall, pp. 477 & 436.

(A similar branch name, the Bailiwick of Broken Bridges, was registered in August 1984 with the note that “Brokenbridge would be a more period form,” but was then released in December 1989 along with many other defunct branch names of the East.)

Vert semy of bees Or marked sable, on a pale argent in pale a coney rampant and a laurel wreath vert.

The canton’s arms were submitted in April 2006, and forwarded to the Society level in May, but then pended in September and not accepted until April of 2007. The pend was due to a confusion about the color of the bees’ wings: the submission form sent to Laurel blazoned them as “bees proper” but displayed bees with wings Or. (In the Society, bees proper have wings argent, body Or, with the abdomen marked with sable stripes.)

Curiously, the image that was uploaded to OSCAR didn’t match the version sent to Laurel — they both started from the same outline image, but the version on OSCAR had been colored differently, showing argent wings and four sable stripes rather than three. Because the image in OSCAR did depict bees proper, the issue was not flagged in commentary prior to reaching Laurel, at which point the September 2006 pend letter pointed out that the picture on the submission form they had received did not match the proposed blazon. The April 2007 LoAR modified the blazon to match the original submission image, “bees Or marked sable,” and accepted it for registration.

The arms are said to contain a rebus for another of the canton’s landmarks: the pale containing the coney can be read as “Coney Aisle,” or Coney Island. (I’ve also heard that the pairing of bees and rabbit provide a reference to “Bugs Bunny,” although I don’t know what connection that has to the canton.)

Heraldic Registrations of the Canton of Lions End

Lions End is Østgarđr’s easternmost branch, covering Nassau County.

Canton of Lions End

The canton’s name was submitted in July 1988, and accepted in October.

The note clarifies that the name does not contain an apostrophe:

Please note: Lions End is a place where lions go to meet. It is not what they sit upon when they sit down to eat. (I.e. it’s Lions plural not Lion’s possessive.) Lions was chosen during a naming binge to try to connect ourselves to our mundane geographic area, and is vaguely derived from Long Island (and various anagrams). The choice of the word End comes from our neighbors to the east An Dubhaigeainn (which translates to Abyss) and so we figured that before you get to the abyss you have to come to an end, and so “Lions End.”

Some additional commentary was added at the kingdom level to support this name, which received a mixed review in the LoAR when approving it for registration:

Although the analogue with Land’s End made on the letter of intent is not really accurate, the name is acceptable.

The distinction is routinely overlooked. For example, when the canton registered its arms in 1990 the acceptance was listed under the name “Lion’s End,” and only corrected sixteen years later. (Indeed as of this writing, the canton’s web site uses the apostrophe in the site’s title and home page, although elsewhere it uses the registered version.)

Azure, a bicorporate lion within a laurel wreath Or. (Returned)

The canton’s initial selection of arms featured a bi-corporate lion, an unusual charge featuring a lion’s head with two bodies attached to it.

It was returned in May 1989 with the note:

Conflict with the arms of John of Northampton, Mayor of London in 1381–83 (“Azure, a bicorporate lion guardant crowned Or.”). As Crescent has noted, this is a frequently depicted piece of armoury. Indeed, it is almost the “defining instance” for the bicorporate lion in most handbooks.

Although the rules have changed since, at the time the Society’s rules for armory conflict included checking against the arms issued by other jurisdictions, including medieval England.

Sable, a bicorporate lion and on a chief Or, three laurel wreaths sable.

A revised version of the device was submitted a few months later, and approved in May of 1990 without comment.

The lion is an allusion to the mundane county of Nassau, which has as its arms “azure, a lion rampant between seven billets Or,” which is derived from the arms of the European house of Nassau, “azure billetty, a lion rampant Or armed and langued gules.”

An attractive depiction of the arms is provided by canton’s heraldic banner.

Sable, a bicorporate lion and on a chief Or, three laurel wreaths vert. (Error)

Due to a scribal transcription error around that time, the arms listed in the Society’s armorial database differ from the registration in the tincture of the laurel wreaths, which were listed as vert instead of sable. [Edited May 23: the correction was rolled out in today’s database update and it is now listed correctly as three laurel wreaths sable.]

As a result, a number of illustrations of the branch’s arms which were taken from that blazon have been drawn incorrectly, including the version that’s currently shown on the canton’s home page, as well as the East Kingdom wiki and other places.

Following the discovery of this error, the O&A is currently being adjusted to match the original registration.

[Edited June 17: Local oral history holds that the wreaths were changed to green because of a ruling at the time that all laurel wreaths must be vert. However, the lack of commentary in the LoAR which accepted the arms with sable wreaths, and the contemporaneous registration of numerous wreaths of other tinctures, suggests that this is post-facto mythologizing — this really was due to a simple scribal error during data entry.]

A bicorporate lion atop a billet fesswise Or.

The canton submitted a populace badge in mid-2013, which was registered that November.

It features the same bicorporate lion as in the branch arms, standing on a billet (the heraldic term for a rectangle).

According to Yehuda ben Moshe, canton herald at the time, the initial intention was to register just a fieldless bicorporate lion Or, which members of the populace had already begun using as an informal populace badge. However, this was found to be too similar to another registration, the holder of which declined to grant permission to conflict, and so they looked for something simple that could be added to existing badges and settled on a billet, which is another design element present in the aforementioned arms of Nassau County.

For the curious, the territory of Lions End was previously home to the Canton of Mandan, sometimes spelled Madnan, which was formed in October 1980, had its name registered in January 1983, went defunct in May 1985, and had its name released in a December 1989 purge of defunct East Kingdom branches, according to Lord Richard the Poor’s “A Geographic History of the East Kingdom” and the Society’s armorial records. The name may have been an allusion to “Madnan’s Neck,” a seventeenth-century name for the Great Neck region, derived from “Menhaden-Ock,” its native Mattinecock name, itself a reference to the small Menhaden fish then plentiful in the region.

Court Report, Picnic in the Ruins

On the 29th of April, their excellencies Østgarðr held court at the Crown Province’s Picnic in the Ruins, under the colonnaded peristyle in the parklands of the Canton of Brokenbridge.

Suder Il Khan and Lada Il Khatun called for those who were attending their first, second, or third event to come forward, and presented them each with a gift of candles in the province’s livery colors, reminding those assembled that these gentles represent the future of our society, and the newcomers were heartily cheered by the populace.

A foreign visitor was welcomed into court, Lady Heloise from the Barony of Southron Gaard in the far-off Kingdom of Lochac. She presented a letter from her Baron and Baroness sending greetings to their excellencies, and requesting safe passage and hospitality for Lady Heloise as she traveled through our lands, promising to do likewise for any of Østgarðr that might journey unto their region. Il Khan bade her welcome and offered the assistance of the province in ensuring her stay here would be pleasant.

Their excellencies expressed their satisfaction with the day’s gathering and thanked those who had made it possible.

There being no other business before their excellencies, court was adjourned.