Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 12.djvu/102

 NOTES AND QUERIES. [9 th s. xn. AUG. i, 1903.

who are considered privileged to beat the onlookers, especially if they do not subscribe, with their inflated weapons. Probably this special use of the bladder, intimately con- nected with frolic and foolishness, suggested the use of "blether," " blethering," and the form common in Yorkshire, "blether-heead"or " blether-head." In some villages and country towns (e.g. Bingley) a " blether-heead band" of men playing incongruous unmusical instruments, and dressed in fancy costumes, is (or recently was) an important feature of the annual wake or feast. I do not remember " bletherskite" in Yorkshire use, except where it may have been imported.

H. SNOWDEN WARD. Hadlow, Kent.

ENGLISH ACCENTUATION (9 th S. xi. 408, 515). Referring to MR. MACMICHAEL'S com- munication on this subject, I would ask whether that gentleman is aware that in Italian the word Lepanto has the stress on its first syllable, thus Lepanto. In this case Byron did not keep to the Italian accen- tuation, but in order to make his line scan he violated the pronunciation of the word in question, throwing the stress, and this erro- neously, on its second syllable. MR. MAC- MICHAEL takes no notice of the circumstance. PATRICK MAXWELL.

ARMS WANTED : ILLEGITIMACY (9 th S. xi. 8, 117, 195, 238). The question raised by your correspondents as to the right of illegitimate descendants to remove from the family arms all reference to their origin is, as MR. MAT- THEWS puts it, " another nice heraldic point for discussion."

One can but re-echo the complaint made by the well-known writer on heraldry, Dr. Woodward, as to the inadequate treatment given by heraldic writers to the modes of indicating illegitimate descent. Woodward says (' Heraldry, English and Foreign,' ed. 1896, vol. ii. chap, iv.) :

" Nisbet (from whom Seton's remarks are for the most part condensed), Montagu, and Planche" are the only British writers who have treated it in anything approaching a ^satisfactory way, and even in their works four or five pages are all that are devoted to a subject which is both curious and interesting."

One of the most popular of modern writers, Bou tell ('Heraldry, Historical and Popular,' ed. 1864), in the very meagre account which he gives of this subject, states (p. 436) that "in modern heraldry the abatement of ille- gitimacy that has generally been recognized is a bendlet or baton sinister." He goes on, however, to say :

"But the early heralds, whatever their feelings may have been upon this point, certainly never

promulgated as a law of heraldic usance any par- ticular difference that should distinguish the arms of persons not of legitimate birth, or those of the descendants of such persons. It would appear, indeed, that this abatement was generally, if not always, determined in accordance with the wishes of different individuals.

" Some abatement of illegitimacy was held and admitted to be necessary ; and provided that the abatement appeared on the shield, it might assume whatever form might be considered best suited to each particular occasion."

Boutell proceeds to give two or three examples to illustrate the practice of the old heralds, and concludes by saying that, except in instances where the abatement is charged upon the royal arms, there appears no reason for transmitting the baton sinister with its peculiar significance ; in all less exceptional cases some mark of cadency might very properly be substituted in its stead, or all traces of abatement might be removed from their shields of arms by the descendants of persons to whom arms had been granted abated with a sinister baton.*

Dr. Woodward, however, devotes an excel- lent chapter (vol. ii. chap, iv.) to the subject, which he states with his usual clearness :

" According to the correct ideas of former times, the possession of coat-armour was the evidence of the nobility of the bearer. Now, as a bastard has no legal paternity, being in the eye. of the law Mius nullius, the ancient jurisconsults were disposed to deny the right of any illegitimate child, however princely or noble his actual paternity, to the use of

arma gentilitia But in later times the custom

became general that the illegitimate children of a noble (i.e., of one who rightfully bore arma genti- litia) assumed their father's arms differenced in some striking manner, e.g., by the addition of some conspicuous charge to the shield, or in some of the ways hereafter to be indicated."

However little of derogation may have attached to the status of illegitimate off- spring in the Middle Ages for the open way in which the appellation " the Bastard " was used and the bearer of it himself received would hardly seem to convey the same reproach as would obtain at the present day- yet the history of this subject nevertheless shows, I think, a not unnatural tendency gradually to efface, so far as possible, from the paternal arms the stigma of illegitimate descent, at least amongst those who had not royal blood in their veins.

In the older days (say the fifteenth century and later) there could have been no mistake

One modern writer, indeed, in his treatise founded on Boutell, which I happen to have by me here, states with reference to the baton that " this mark cannot be removed from coat armour, though some heralds are of opinion that it can be removed after three generations." But I have failed to verify that opinion.