Page:A Complete Guide to Heraldry.djvu/482

 pillar of the gateway is surmounted by a shield held in the paws of a single supporter, and the Governmental use of the Royal supporters in an amazing variety of attitudes, some of which are grossly unheraldic, has not helped towards a true understanding. The reposeful attitude of watchful slumber in which the Royal lion and unicorn are so often depicted, may perhaps be in the nature of submission to the Biblical teaching of Isaiah that the lion shall lie down with the lamb (and possibly therefore also with the unicorn), in these times of peace which have succeeded those earlier days when "the lion beat the unicorn round and round the town."



In official minds, however, the sole attitude for the supporters is the rampant, or as near an approach to it as the nature of the animal will allow. A human being, a bird, or a fish naturally can hardly adopt the attitude. In Scotland, the land of heraldic freedom, various exceptions to this can be found. Of these one can call to mind the arms used by the town of Kilmarnock (Fig. 668), in which the supporters, "squirrels proper," are depicted always as sejant. These particular creatures, however, would look strange to us in any other form. These arms unfortunately have never been matriculated as the arms of the town (being really the arms of the Boyd family, the attainted Earls of Kilmarnock), and consequently can hardly as yet be referred to as a definite precedent, because official matriculation might result in a similar "happening" to the change which was made in the case of the arms of Inverness. In all representations of the arms of earlier date than the matriculation, the supporters, (dexter)