Page:The Ancestor Number 1.djvu/88

 48 THE ANCESTOR seeing where balance and proportion lie in the single case before him. Of the lines which divide the shield or vary the edgings of charges it may be noted that the conventional cloud edging called nebuly is very rare in the middle ages and not to be found at all in the early rolls. The word's appearance in modern blazoning (as in the arms of Blount and Lovell) is due to the fact that the later heralds, depicting a wavy line as they did with a feeble ripple, were convinced that the bold waving in the old examples must bear some different name. In con- sidering the ancient heraldry, nebuly, or as Mr. Boutell would have it, nehuUe^ may be packed away with dovetailed lines, and with the invected line which in a Victorian grant of arms speaks to the antiquary as plainly as ever a neglected shop ticket upon our other modern purchases. Crenellee finds a better word in the old English battled^ and raguly may make way for ragged. We do not speak of the famous ragged staff of Beauchamp as a staff ragulSe, When the shield is divided with stripes paly, bendy or barry, verbiage will be saved if we follow the old blazonry by recognizing that six divisions make the normal number of such stripes. Barry silver and gules therefore connotes to every one understanding heraldry barry of six pieces^ and the like rule applies to the paly and bendy shields. When however a chief is imposed upon a barry coat the normal divisions will natur- ally be reduced to four. Barry wavy was commonly dis- tinguished by the word wavy alone. Wavy gold and gules is therefore as ample a description of the arms of Lovell as is the handbook blazon of Barry undee of six or ana gules. Bar- rulee is a mock-French abomination which may be pilloried with humettk. A barred coat of many bars, like the well known coat of Valence of Pembroke, was anciently described in the French as burele. The Boutells and Cussanses have jumped to the conclusion that this word is a diminutive of the word barry^ and, its u being ignored, burele becomes barrulee for the handbooks, and barrulet^ which is ' the diminutive of a bar,' follows in the same coinage. Here let us purge the heraldry books of the obsession of the ' diminutives of the ordinary.' A glance at the list of these must have driven many a student with but reasonable powers of memory from the study of heraldry. When we have allowed that there is a species of narrow bend called a baston, and that the little