Cover Letter March 1987

Taigh Moran Chat

RR 2, Northside Road

Wading River, NY 11792

18 May, 1987

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 enclosed letter contains the results of the March meeting, which was held on 29 February. The following letters were processed at that time: Outlands (11/15), Atenveldt (12/1), Ansteorra (12/3), Caid (12/14), West (12/17), Atlantia (12/22), Ansteorra (12/30) and East (12/31). Of 289 submission elements included in this letter, 212 are acceptances, 73 are returns (including several submissions withdrawn by Star) and 4 are items pended for an overall acceptance rate of 73%.

Incidentally, there has been some concern amongst the Laurel staff at the markedly decreased overall percentage of acceptances over the past months as compared to those prevailing in the last months of Master Baldwin's tenure. An examination of conscience seemed to indicate that the inevitable change in "biases" involving matters of judgement should have balanced out: while interpretations of the rules in some areas may be a bit stricter (e.g., in evaluation of sources for name documentation), others are no doubt looser (e.g., application of "cascading demotion"). After considerable discussion as to the elements common to the meetings since November, when this overall trend became manifest, the suggestion was made that the overall drop might be attributed to the sudden increase in "catch-up letters" which tend to be less stringently researched and to the fact that a statistically significant proportion of the submissions involved "first attempts" by heralds new to the submissions process at Laurel level. Breaking down the "success rate" for the March meeting by Kingdom tends to support this hypothesis: Caid 95%, West 88%, Atlantia 81%, East 80% Atenveldt 65%, Outlands 65% and Ansteorra 53%. The figures from the previous meetings produce similar results.

The April Laurel meeting was held on Sunday, 26 April. The meeting considered following letters: Aten (1/1), West (1/9), Caid (1/18), Atlantia (1/27) and Middle (1/31).

The May meeting will be held on Sunday, 24 May. At that time will be considered: Aten (2/1), Calontir (2/1), An Tir (2/5), West (2/8), Atlantia (2/18) and East (2/18).

The June meeting is scheduled for Sunday, 14 June and will consider all letters dated in March save for the Atenveldt letter of 1 March. That letter will be considered at the Laurel meeting to be held at the Symposium. (However, we would appreciate it if those commenting on the Atenveldt letter could post their comments in time to reach us by the regular Laurel meeting so that we can complete preparation of the paperwork in good time. Otherwise, one of the discussion sessions at the Symposium will turn into a practicum on how to prepare paperwork for a Laurel session and I am sure that the autocrats will exercise their creativity in devising suitable punishment for any member of the College of Arms who makes this necessary!). The July meeting is now scheduled for Sunday, 26 July, and will consider all letters dated in April.

We are currently investigating the feasibility of a "rolling Laurel meeting" to be held at the War in several relatively short sessions of no more than two hours or so at a shot, but this will depend on the number of submissions received in May, the travel plans of a host of heralds and the kindness of the War Herald. (Irreverent rumours have it that staff preparations will include knitting armour for Laurel if she is stupid brave enough to hold a Laurel meeting surrounded by more than four thousand potential dissatisfied customers!)

In my report to the Board for their 10 May meeting, I specifically requested that the Board state their objections to the criteria, based on the suggestions from the West and Caid, which were presented to the Board at the February meeting. Hopefully, the May meeting will have addressed this issue so that we can move forward on this point and then proceed to more important and long-ranging issues such as the simplification of the Rules for Submission.

In the cover letter to the acceptances and returns from the January meeting, it was requested that members of the College who had thoughts on the directions that the Society should be taking in revising the Rules share their thoughts in "position papers" for discussion over the summer, particularly at the Symposium and at Pennsic. At this point no such papers have reached the Laurel Office. Some "trailing one's coat" papers will be coming with the April and/or May letter of acceptance and return (the size of the last three letters has precluded their inclusion without a significant postage penalty). Please share your thoughts with others prior to the Symposium so that considered thought can be given to suggestions before discussion begins.

It was recently suggested to me that Laurel should not modify a blazon proposed by a Principal Herald unless that blazon is actually wrong, i.e., makes a misstatement of the charges, tinctures or positions involved in the emblazon. (Note that this was suggested in the kindest possible manner as a means of cutting work for Laurel and removing one opportunity of errors of omission or commission in blazon.)

Unfortunately, this is a limitation that is as unacceptable to me as it was to my predecessors. While the gentle who made this suggestion is adept at blazon which is not only clear and concise, but often euphonious as well, this is not true of all heralds whose blazons reach the College of Arms. Often a blazon which is not actually in and of itself wrong will not be the most felicitous manner of describing a piece of armoury and it is the position of the Laurel Office that we should always strive for the best, even if we succeed with less frequency than we would like.

It has no doubt been observed that I am rather conservative when it comes to reblazon of previously registered devices. If a blazon is correct in terms of the conventions in force at the time it passed and that blazon is not actually erroneous to such a degree that a herald researching for difference or an artist drawing the emblazon would misunderstand it, I will be loathe to change it. (Wholesale reblazons in the past, sometimes due to a new definition of precedent, terminology or defaults, has at times caused chaos and serious "consumer discontent".)

On the other hand, I also feel that later problems can be avoided if we are as clear as possible in our initial blazon of items as they are registered by the College. Two overriding considerations should govern the casting and recasting of blazon at all levels: clarity and elegance.

The touchstone that we use for determining if the blazon is as clear as possible is whether the average heraldic artist would be able to draw a reasonable approximation of the emblazon from the blazon provided. Since clarity is our primary goal, terminology which is not readily available in standard texts must be avoided, even though it may be period and may even be more elegant than a commonly used term (the use of "erased" as a line of division proposed by the West for the device of Jane Falconmoor is an excellent example). Often clarity will demand a more verbose blazon than we would like in order to be precise about the relationships of charges or their tinctures.

Whenever clarity and elegance conflict, elegance and/or brevity must be sacrificed. Note that elegance includes brevity, lack of reduplication, inclusion of allusions and cants, all those elements that make for "style" in blazon. We should value them highly, but in our search for the most elegant turn of phrase we cannot lose sight of the fact that elegance is secondary to the primary goal of blazon: to describe the emblazon correctly. Nowhere is it truer than in heraldry that a picture is worth a thousand words: if our thousand words do not reflect the picture accurately, they are useless.

In his December letter of appeal, Vesper raised a number of interesting questions which should be addressed, notably the question of the precise limitations which should be placed on visual conflict and the degree to which it is possible (or desirable) to remove all traces of subjectivity from decisions on conflict and style. Linked to this is a secondary question of the degree to which Laurel should rule only on the basis of "consensus" in the College of Arms or should retain the right to adopt a minority view, to utilize his/her own expertise or that of non-commenting staff or to seek "outside expertise".

It is perhaps necessary to deal with the latter issue first. I realize that the question has been stated in a rather "loaded" manner. As most of you know, I have a strong commitment to "consensus" government on matters of policy in the College of Arms, to the extent that my own rather strong views on issues are usually subordinated to the feelings of the College of Arms (indeed, several members of the College have complained of this since they expected me to be more, urn, "rampant" based on my years of commentary as Elmet and Brigantia). In a majority of cases this commitment extends to the application of that policy in making decisions on specific submissions.

However, I also feel that it is not only the right but the duty of Laurel to use the best information available. If that information has not been made available for one reason or another through commentary in the College, then it should be my right to go further afield, for example, to use my knowledge of languages or my library to support a name (or refute it). If the right to use expertise from whatever source, whether it has appeared in a letter of commentary or not, is denied, then the position of Laurel becomes merely that of a collator of letters requiring no expertise (and indeed expertise then becomes a handicap!). I cannot believe that this is what the College of Arms or indeed the Society at large would desire.

Note that this is not at all a moot point and does not entirely arise from Vesper's letter of appeal. To take a rather extreme example, I have recently had at least one phone call objecting to a recent return because the conflict called had never been mentioned in a letter of comment, but had been spotted by further research in the Armorial at the time of the Laurel meeting. The individual agreed that the conflict was there, but claimed that it should not be considered since none of the "educated eyes" in the College of Arms had noted it. Another incident is more typical: someone called to complain about a decision concerning a name and commented that, if I did not have graduate degrees in medieval history and classical languages, I would not have noticed any problems with the name. This latter type of criticism does bother me and I try to avoid exercise of truly specialist knowledge (conflicts with the names of obscure Byzantine priests or names from slave tombs in the Catacombs, for instance). On the other hand, I feel that I am robbing the College and the Society if I do not put the same expertise at their disposal as Laurel as I did as a commenting herald. (Modest, isn't she?)

It may seem as though these incidents (neither involved the West, incidentally) go rather far afield from the issues immediately raised by Vesper. However, the same issues are implicit as an underlying in Vesper's statement that three of the devices appealed "were returned from the Laurel meeting based solely on the opinion of those who were able to attend that meeting.

More important, however, is the issue of the working of the "subjective" in determining acceptable style or conflict. This is a large issue, basically involving the old debate as to whether heraldry is an art or a science (it would be interesting to have a session on that basic philosophical issue itself at the Symposium).

Implicit in Vesper's arguments is the belief that neither style nor visual conflict should be used as a grounds for return of a device unless there has been a formed consensus of the membership of the College of Arms. While we agree that the existence of a formed consensus is the optimum path, it often does not exist and in some cases cannot, most particularly when the question of visual conflict (as opposed to technical point counting) arises.

Ironically, it seems to have been a desire on my part to be more precise in stating reasons for return that triggered some of the discussions of subjective perception. For much of my career as a Society herald, I have quarreled with the purely algebraic approach to conflict, which often led in the heyday of "demotion" to a conflict depending on the order in which points of difference were counted. In some cases, even though the theoretical "point count" was ambiguous, the visual similarity was clear. Rather than merely stating "conflict" in such cases (which was something that infuriated me when I was a Principal Herald), I resolved to be specific and state that the determining factor in the return was the visual similarity, rather than any technical conflict which might exist.

It perhaps advisable for the record to state (again) the philosophy of perception that underlies blazon, as I use it in determining what is (and is not) a visual conflict. When an individual views two devices, apart or together, they go through several phases in processing the information. There are minor variations amongst individuals (particularly between heralds and non-heralds) and some differences between the way the information would be processed by an individual in the "real" Middle Ages and one in the Current Middle Ages (we tend to be more sensitive to colour similarities and less sensitive to shape similarities than our medieval peers), but these perceptions have general application, as evidenced by the structured language of period and modern blazon and numerous "field tests" amongst heralds and non-heralds in the Society.

The observer usually registers first the colour of the field, usually in terms of metal versus colour, then if it is divided and of what tinctures and only then by what type of line of partition, if one is present. Then the tincture of the charge closes to the center of the device is processed (this is one case where it seems likely at least some of our ancestors differed in perception: there is quite a bit of evidence that they looked a the type of central charge before its colour and a large minority of the populace do that as well). Again the tincture recognition is usually a two stage thing: first the category and then the specific tincture. Then the overall type of central charge is determined, followed by its number and posture (e.g., rampant, inverted, etc.). Only then will perception pass to the "peripheral" secondary charges, moving from center out and from top to bottom and repeating the tincture, type, number/posture process until all charges which lie directly on the field have been "digested". Then and only then normally does the eye return to the center of the device to consider tertiary charges (again tincture, type, number/posture) from the center to the edges of the shield.

In practice, this means that two devices which are strongly similar in the center will be perceived as being more alike than two devices which differ strongly in the center but are identical on the periphery. This is the psychological underpinning for the corollaries to the "complete difference of charge rule" , the "point and a half rule", etc. Again practically speaking, changes to tertiaries on an ordinary in the center of a device will contribute considerably greater visual difference than tertiaries on a charge which is itself on the periphery.

It must be conceded that these degrees of difference cannot be totally quantified and it is extremely dubious whether they should be. The fact is that there is considerable agreement on the basic principles: it is fine-tuning may be a matter of debate. Frankly, the "grey areas" of visual conflict often seem to occur more frequently the more complex the device in its processing (which often comes with "typical Society heraldry"): so much is required in the digestion and/or so unusual are the patterns that each change has less cumulative effect. It is unavoidable that there will be "judgement calls" in such cases. When this is the case, the final determinant will be the actual emblazons compared by Laurel and anyone else at the meeting (this is why the Brachet meeting so often says "Please compare the emblazons."). What is registered is the emblazon, which is often not what the educated heraldic imagination of today would automatically reconstruct from the blazon. Undoubtedly, if the Society lasts long enough, Laurel meetings will be held "on line" with full colour digitizers set up to link all members of the College of Arms with instant feed-back to Laurel after everyone views the original registered emblazon with which a conflict is called. Until technology allows, however, I see little alternative to the current process of trusting to the honour and expertise of Laurel (because the decision is ultimately Laurel's, no matter whether the Laurel meeting is Laurel alone or half the College of Arms) and screaming like bloody hell when you disagree with Laurel's decision.

On consideration, the paragraphs above seem to have metamorphosed into a "position paper", postal considerations or no. Please consider them in that light. Hopefully, we can engage in "frank and free discussion" on these issues at the Symposium and/or Pennsic.

Your servant,

Alisoun