Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/85

 hanging beneath the crest (Fig. 396). This can be, however, only an heraldic device. Occasionally in illuminations a knight is represented in a crested salade; but this may be an artistic licence, the display of heraldry being an easy way of explaining his personality. On purely utilitarian grounds we are inclined to dispute the idea of the salade having received any actual cresting in warfare. At its best the salade was certainly a top heavy head-piece; so that the addition of a ponderous crest, even if only fashioned of ''papier mâché'', would have made it almost impossible to wear. On the great seals of the later Plantagenet kings the sovereigns are represented as wearing crested salades as headgear. This again must have been an artistic licence. In England, except on the tilting helm, the representation of a crest is rarely seen; though a mid-XVth century English writer, whose name is unknown, alludes on two occasions to "salads" with crests.

Louvre, Paris

A description of the salade would be incomplete without mention of the bevor—bavier, or baviere—a defence that was latterly almost always worn in company with it. Many are the derivations suggested for this word. Grose says that bevor is derived from beveur, drinker, or the Italian bevere, to drink, forgetting the fact that its original spelling was bavier, bavière (French) and baviera (Italian). His derivation therefore is not convincing, and we prefer to derive it from the French baver, to slobber. Shakespeare's use of the word rather suggests that he is alluding to a movable attachment to the helmet. Speaking of it in Henry IV, Pt. II, act iv, sc. 1,