SCA - College of Arms
P.O. Box 742825
Dallas, TX 75374-2825
(214) 276-2129
74107.1446@compuserve.com
Unto the members of the College of Arms and all others who may read this missive do Shayk Da'ud ibn
Auda, Laurel King of Arms, and Baron Talan Gwynek, Pelican King of Arms, send Greetings!
The February 1996 Laurel meeting is scheduled for Saturday, February 17, 1996, and will consider the
following Letters of Intent: Middle (10/9); Middle (10/11); An Tir (10/12); Atlantia (10/15); Caid (10/18);
Trimaris (10/25); Caid (10/27); West (10/29); and East (10/29). Original commentary on these
LoIs must have been in the College's hands no later than December 31, 1995. Responses and rebuttals to
commentary must be in the College's hands no later than January 31, 1996.
The March 1996 Laurel meeting is scheduled for Saturday, March 9, 1996, and will consider the following
Letters of Intent: Meridies (10/31); Outlands (11/1); Atlantia (11/12); An Tir (11/13); West (11/15); Outlands
(11/20); and Meridies (11/30). Original commentary on these LoIs must be in the College's
hands no later than January 31, 1996. Responses and rebuttals to commentary must be in the College's
hands no later than February 28, 1996.
The April 1996 Laurel meeting is scheduled for Saturday, April 20, 1996, and will consider the following
Letters of Intent: Caid (11/27); Middle (12/6); An Tir (12/10); Atlantia (12/10); West (12/18); Laurel (12/21);
East (12/21); Outlands (12/26); and Caid (12/29). Original commentary on these LoIs must be
in the College's hands no later than February 28, 1996. Responses and rebuttals to commentary must be in
the College's hands no later than March 31, 1996.
The May 1996 Laurel meeting is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, May 18, 1996, and will consider the
following Letters of Intent: Trefoil (1/2); Atenveldt (1/10); West (1/16); An Tir (1/18); Atlantia (1/21); East
(1/25); and Outlands (1/29). Original commentary on these LoIs must be in the College's
hands no later than March 31, 1996. Responses and rebuttals to commentary must be in the College's
hands no later than April 30, 1996.
The June 1996 Laurel meeting is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, June 8, 1996, and will consider Letters
of Intent dated and mailed in February 1996. One (or two, if sufficiently short) Letters of Intent will be
considered at the Laurel roadshow meeting on Sunday, June 23, 1996, at the Known World Heraldic
Symposium. Original commentary on these LoIs must be in the College's hands no later than
April 30, 1996. Responses and rebuttals to commentary must be in the College's hands no later than May
31, 1996.
Not all Letters of Intent may be considered when they are originally scheduled on this Cover Letter.
Date of mailing of the LoI, date of receipt of the Laurel packet, or other factors may delay consideration of
certain Letters of Intent. Additionally, not all Letters of Intent received have been scheduled because the
administrative requirements (receipt of the forms packet, receipt of the necessary fees, etc.) have not yet
been met.
ROSTER CHANGES
Triskele Principal Herald (Trimaris) has a new address. It is: Laura de Botelesford (Laura Dolan), P.O.
Box 3057, Pinellas Park, FL 34664-3057; (813) 545-4339; lauradolan@aol.com
Two of the numbers were accidentally transposed in the new Star Principal Herald's (Ansteorra) ZIP code.
The correct ZIP code is 75709.
Albion Herald's (Drachenwald) mundane name is Tero J. Heikkinen. I had not received this information in
time for the letter placing him on the mailing list. His e-mail address is:
tsahib@vipunen.hut.fi
Former Crescent (Caid) should have been retained on the Roster and Mailing List. For those who do not
have it handy, her name and address are: Pursuivant at Large: Catrin ferch Daffydd (Angela Martin),
59015 Sunway Drive, Yucca Valley, CA 92284; (619) 365-7321
LAUREL TRANSITION
Per Mistress Jaelle's letter in the most recent Mid-Atlantia pack, submissions forms should be sent directly
to her as Laurel designate beginning with March 1996 Letters of Intent. However, Laurel needs to continue
to receive a copy of each LoI for the files, and should continue to receive the submissions fees checks, as he
retains the responsibility for the administrative and financial functions of the office until the transition of
office occurs in late June.
COMMENTARY PERIOD
Sufficient opposition, well-reasoned and well-grounded, has been presented that I do not believe that the
commentary period at the Laurel level can reasonably be reduced from the current four months to three.
As a consequence, no changes in the time for commentary and responses to commentary will be
implemented now.
In the interests of our submitters, however, I urge principal and other heralds to look at their in-kingdom
processing procedures to see where time savings might be made, with a view to speeding up the submissions
process wherever possible.
FREE TRUMPET PRESS
A copy of the most recent Free Trumpet Press price list, including the latest updates to the Armorial and
Ordinary, is enclosed. Please copy and distribute as widely as possible.
EX ROSTRO PELECANI (with additional editorial comments by Laurel in [square
brackets])
The Rest of the Alphabet. Some time ago Laurel proposed a simple scheme for representing
non-ASCII characters by combinations of two ASCII characters enclosed in curly braces. For example, for
óand òhe proposed the representations {o'}and {'o}, respectively. Others subsequently
proposed other schemes that are already in wide use, among them HTML and TEX, and Harpy noted that
we might at some point need representations for letters not mentioned by Laurel. Nevertheless, its quasi-
pictorial nature makes Laurel's scheme easy to learn, and the basic idea appears to be capable of
considerable extension if necessary. Moreover, Morsulus has very recently begun to make use of it in his
database, and several members of the College are already using it or a slight variant in their e-mail.
(Rather than {o:} for ö some are using {o"}, and similarly for other instances of the diÆesis or
umlaut. [Laurel himself has been convinced that {o"} is the more widely used convention.]) This being the
case, we see no reason not to go ahead and make Laurel's original scheme a CoA standard for ASCII
representation of non-ASCII characters, with extensions to be defined as needed.
We have for some time been able to print such characters as ü ê ó àetc. in the
LoAR; these letters have been correctly registered even if this fact wasn't necessarily apparent in the
Armorial. But we have not heretofore allowed the letters ð(edh) and þ(thorn) to be registered,
though they also can be printed in the LoAR. With the adoption of a standard ASCII representation, this
restriction seems unnecessary, especially considering that these letters were more frequently used in period
than many that we routinely allow. This month we have therefore registered two names with the letter
ð Freydí Kausi Fiðardótir (An Tir) and Ragnarr Gráíetha
(Middle), in each case taking our cue from the submitter's forms. Please note, therefore, that
it is no longer necessary to choose an arbitrary transliteration of these letters in submitting an Old Norse or
Old English name. Of course, period transliterations are still acceptable as
well.
[For those of you who do not recall the list of equivalents, it is reproduced here.]
This is a reminder that we are still looking for bids to host the 1997 Known World Heraldic Symposium. If
you or a group you know would be interested in hosting this event but have questions, please feel free to
contact Laurel, Pelican, or any of the autocrats of prior symposia. Bids should be mailed at a minimum to
Laurel, Laurel designate, and the commenting members of the College of Arms. The deadline for the
receipt of bids to host the 1997 KWHS is May 1, 1996.
MISCELLANY
The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same.
Here are some precedents from the College's history. Anyone besides me recognize any issues of more
recent years in any of these?
"We use English heraldry because we speak English. I do not claim that ours is in any way superior to other
systems of heraldry. It is merely that we can research it most easily. We do need to stick to a single system;
we would be far too confused if we tried to use them all at once." (Karina of the Far West, 15 Nov 78, p.
2)
"When the College of Arms was first established, it was assumed that it would be no more than a central
registry office; that the essential checking, correcting and rejecting would all be done at the Kingdom level
and everything submitted to this office would be ready to be accepted. How I wish it could have worked out
that way." (Karina of the Far West, 18 Aug 77, p. 2)
"We will no longer accept `wavy-crested' (characterized in Boutell as `new'). It is too far out of period. We
beat our breasts and cry Mea culpa for having allowed it once." (Karina of the Far West, quoting Harold
Breakstone, 29 Oct 76, p. 6)
"Lord Alfgar rightly says that `Anything which requires over fifty words to blazon should be sent to the
Russian front.'" (Karina of the Far West, 11 Aug 77, p. 7)
"By requiring that all names be in keeping with period usage, we automatically must restrict the number of
languages in a personal name to two, as the use of more than two languages in a name would have been
unheard of in our period." Wilhelm von Schlüsel, Cover Letter 12 May 1981, p. 5
"You can have a Welsh name, or an Anglicized Welsh name, but not something halfway in between."
Wilhelm von Schlüsel, LoAR 24 Jun 1981, p. 11
"Rhiannon is the name of a goddess and does not seem to have been used as a given name in period.
Therefore, it may not be used under the new rules." Wilhelm von Schlüsel, LoAR 26 Oct 1981, p.
10
Until next month, pray believe that I am, and remain,
Copyright ©
1996,97 Society
for Creative Anachronism, Inc.