Taigh Moran Chat
RR 2, Northside Road
Wading River, NY 11792
4 June, 1989

Unto the members of the College of Arms and any others who may read this missive, greetings from Alisoun MacCoul of Elphane, Laurel Queen of Arms!

The May session was held on Sunday, May 21. (Actually, truth in packaging demands that we confess that it was started in New York on Sunday, May 21, with some decisions made over Memorial Day weekend in the Hampton Inn in Charleston, South Carolina.) It covered the letters from An Tir (11/28), Calontir (2/1), Caid (2/12), Atenveldt (2/13), West (2/13), Calontir (2/14), Ansteorra (2/16), Outlands (2/24), East (2/25), Meridies (2/26), Atlantia (2/28) and East (2/28). Of 365 actions arising out of this meeting 290 were positive, 72 were negative and 3 involved pended items for an overall success rate of 79%.

The actual June session was held on Sunday, June 18, but due to the slim number of comments received at this time all decisions made at this meeting will have to be reviewed over the next couple of weeks in the light of further commentary received. (So many comments are missing that we assume they were sent to South Carolina where they are awaiting Laurel's return.) The letters for that meeting included Calontir (3/1), Caid (3/5), West (3/14/), Ansteorra (3/16), East (3/20), Trimaris (3/20), Meridies (3/21), East (3/23) and Calontir (3/31). Due to paperwork problems, the March letter from An Tir is on indefinite suspension.

To allow time for adequate discussion of the rules and administrative issues, Laurel had originally decided to break with tradition and not hold a "College of Arms Submissions Session" at this Symposium. (This decision was made after extensive discussions with various staff members and several Principal Heralds.) However, as the autocrats have scheduled extra time for this session, we will try to hold a short session before proceeding to a discussion of administrative issues. The submissions to be considered in that session are from the letter from Meridies (4/27) and, if time allows, from Calontir (4/30). If you are attending the Symposium, you may bring your comments on these letters to the meeting. If you are not, you should entrust them to someone who is attending or send them to Laurel in New York to arrive no later than Wednesday, July 5. Apologies for the short notice on this, but the plans changed after the April letter had been entrusted to the mails.

The regular July meeting is scheduled for Sunday, 23 July and will consider the Middle (4/3), Atlantia (4/15), Ansteorra (4/21), Caid (4/23), East (4/28) and Atenveldt (4/30). As the paperwork for the April letter from the West did not reach the Laurel office until mid-June, less than six weeks before the scheduled date of the July meeting, that letter has been postponed until the August meeting.

Note the following tentative dates for Laurel meetings for the remaining months of the year: August 27, September 17, October 15, November 12 and December 17. As Society and mundane travel plans, furniture arrival and rearrangement plans, mundane work pressures and schedules of local volunteers in South Carolina have not really become firm yet, these are necessarily very tentative.

ROSTER CHANGES

There is a new Sycamore Herald in the East Kingdom: Michael Langley of Riversmeet (Michael Layne), 4008 Kirby Street, South Charleston, WV 25309. He will not be commenting at this time. In Trimaris Brigit Olesdottir of Loch Rae has been replaced as Lymphad Herald by Siegfried Heydrich (Kim O'Doherty), 173 Hibiscus, Fort Myers Beach, FL 33931; (813) 463-6341.

ON THE SYMPOSIUM AND LAUREL'S TRAVEL SCHEDULE

As you are all aware, the next Known World Heraldic Symposium rapidly approaches. Reports from the autocrats indicate that all proceeds smoothly and that attendance will be substantial at this event which is scheduled for the second weekend in July in Caid.

Those needing to contact Laurel in the period immediately before and after the Symposium should be aware that she will be spending most of the week prior to the Symposium in New York. At this point, she will be flying to New York on the evening of June 30 (arriving very late). She will be at home there, trying desperately to pack up the house with the aid of a few friends over the Fourth of July weekend and will leave on the afternoon of Thursday, July 6 for Los Angeles. It should be assumed that she will not be able to answer any calls or deal with any queries or crises for the following weeks as she will fly back to New York on the following Monday (July 10) and early the next morning start driving down to South Carolina. (Please arrange not to have any crises that week...)

From Thursday, July 13, on Laurel should be more or less continuously reachable in South Carolina, allowing for the exigencies of Society and mundane weekend travel...

ON THE PROCEDURES FOR LETTERS OF INTENT

Unfortunately, it appears that it is time for a few reminders on the proper procedures for letters of intent. The most important of these is that the letter of intent is not complete until the forms packet has been mailed to Laurel. No letter will be scheduled until the a complete forms packet has been received by the Laurel Office. A complete packet must include two copies of the letter of intent sent to the commentors, payment for the submissions included and a form or other "piece of paper" for each submission on the letter of intent. This includes appeals, resubmissions of recently returned submissions, submissions omitted from a previous letter of intent, proposals for alternate titles, etc. We have been far too lenient on this latter point in the past with the result that Laurel staff had to make up the "pieces of paper" rather than return or pend a submission on purely procedural grounds. This has eaten up far too much staff time and we will have to "get tough" in the future.

Also please bear in mind that letters of intent must be sent out by the Principal Herald or a single, duly delegated submissions deputy. The only exception to this is the case of a Principality which is about to advance to Kingdom status in the near future. Even then, this may only be done with the prior consent of the Laurel Office.

ON "READING THE INSTRUCTIONS"

One of the common lines amongst many computer programmers is "When all else fails, read the directions!" There is an almost equally popular belief that there are more programmers and assorted computer mavens in the College of Arms than there are at IBM. Be that as it may, we have had a real problem of late with people "not reading the instructions". While Laurel would be the last to hold that the cover letters to the letters of acceptance and return contain jewels of prose or pearls of wisdom, they do contain information on procedures, policies and deadlines that are occasionally necessary to the smooth functioning of the College. Of late there has been compelling evidence that a significant proportion of the membership of the College is either not reading this material or is forgetting it the moment it has been read. Why do we say this? Many heralds, old and new, have been ignoring basic procedures for letters of intent (see above), commentary (like sending comments in good time and copying the relevant members of the College) and other administrative functions (e.g., warrants for kingdom officers which must be on the appropriate warrant form and signed by both the King and Queen). Others have ignored deadlines for submissions or rules commentary and have been upset when, as a result, their comments could not be given the weight they deserved.

Please make a real attempt to read and follow necessary details. If need be mark your calendars with relevant dates and use post-it notes to remind you of procedures. This will not only make your life easier, it will allow the College and the Laurel Office to function a lot more smoothly than it has been in recent months. (And, yes, Laurel herself has made the resolution to do this too!)

ON THE USE OF COMPANION AS AN ALTERNATE FORM OF ADDRESS

As many are aware, the November letter from An Tir included a request that "Companion" be approved as an alternate title for "Master" or "Mistress".

The history behind is rather long and complicated and derives from the desire of a lady in An Tir to avoid using the traditional title "Mistress" because she feels it had unfortunate connotations in modern idiom. Unfortunately, the issue itself became something of a football in the late heraldic contentiousness in An Tir and, as a result, a fair amount of misinformation has been circulated on the history of the issue. Accordingly, it is perhaps as well to review the history of the submission briefly before considering the discussion in the College.

Apparently, the lady in question indicated when she received her Pelican that she was not comfortable with the title "Mistress" and indicated that she intended to use the title "Companion". She seems to have been told at that time by one or more senior heralds that this was not an approved form of address for a member of the Order of the Pelican and that, if she wished to use the title, it would have to be considered by the College of Arms. At around the same time, the Laurel Office received a query from a herald in An Tir on this issue and indicated that alternate titles would have to be considered by the College of Arms as a whole and would have to be submitted for discussion by the College. Subsequently, the submittor contacted the Steward who passed this to the Laurel Office as an heraldic matter. Laurel in turn remanded it back to the An Tir College of Heralds with a recommendation that the proposed alternate title be put to the College of Arms for its consideration. The next letter of intent to appear from An Tir came some three months later, dated in November, 1988, and was postponed to the May, 1989, meeting because of paperwork problems. In the interim the Board had taken note of the issue and remanded it to the College of Arms and Laurel Office.

Discussion in the Society was almost unanimous in feeling that the title was so widely used for those belonging to Society orders, including those below peerage level, that it was inappropriate to approve it as an official title limited to the use of peers, let alone to members of the Order of the Pelican. Commentary also focused on the fact that the term is generally used (mundanely and in the Society) as a third person title, i.e., a descriptor such as "Companion of the Silver Crescent", "Companion of the Purple Fret", "Companion of the Tempered Steel". Thus it would be inappropriate to use it as a "form of address" title for a usage such as "Companion John Doe" or "Companion Richenda Roe", which is the usage in question. Indeed, the only instance which could be adduced by commentors of the use of "Companion" as a prefixed title in this manner was derived from Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series where the title (and descriptor) is used for the highly intelligent superequines who form mind bonds with the heralds upon whom the series focuses, an example which only created a stronger sense of unease at the usage.

All this being so, it is our feeling that the sense of the College is that "Companion" should not be approved as an alternate form of address for "Master" or "Mistress".

Your servant,

[Alisoun]