Or and Argent

 
Daniel C. Boyer
 
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Daniel C. Boyer
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29 August 2010 08:56
 

Joseph McMillan;78592 wrote:

Let’s go through these statistically, and assume that these fifteen are a fair sample of the "more than 60" that Heim was able to find in a collection of about 1200 (5%).

1.  Von Podewils - parted field, in which one part is checky.  This is like calling the arms of Stewart (Or a fess checky Azure and Argent) a tincture violation.  Heim’s image shows the stag issuant Or, but the blazon doesn’t.

 

2. Schumacher - the weird blazon obscures the nature of the arms.  More clearly:  Per fess, the chief per pale Argent and Gules a pallet Or, the base Vert three hearts Gules, over all a bar and all within a bordure Or.  All the metal on metal involves ordinaries surmounting parted fields—not an issue.  There appears to be a color on color violation in base, but hearts gules=hearts proper.  The norm on much of the continent seems to be that charges in their natural colors are an exception.  But let’s call this a violation to be on the conservative side.

 

3.  Von Pultz - clear violation.

 

4. Puder - a metal ordinary overlaying a field that is quarterly of a metal and color.  Not a violation.

 

5.  Gas i Fyn - goose heads Argent on Or—again, goose heads are naturally white, so could be treated as proper, but I’ll count it as a violation anyway.

 

6.  Ambring - again, a metal ordinary overlaying metal subordinaries in opposite directions.  Not a violation.

 

7. Hohendorff - gold pallet on silver, a violation.

 

8. Lund - minor, but a violation.

 

9. Munthe af Morgenstierne - violation.

 

10. Beldenak - one could think of this as a tierced field and thus not a violation, but I’ll score it as a violation.

 

11.  De Thygesen - violation

 

12.  Sadersen - metal charge on a parted field—not a violation.

 

13.  Walter - can he be serious?  counting the line where a metal charge on a colored field is dimidiated with a metal field?  Not a violation, not even close.  This is the kind of thing I was talking about.

 

14.  Stavenvoet - metal charge (lion) on parted field—not a violation.

 

15.  Navesen - violation.

 

So of these 15 Danish examples, 6 are not violations and several others are arguable.  If we apply this same ratio of "false positives" to the total of 60 that Heim found out of 1200, we get an estimated violation rate of 3%.

 

What’s the over/under on the number of golfers out of every 100 who sometimes improve a lie?  More than three?


Do we have blazons on the ones that involve proper? And I’m not sure what you mean about the continent—aren’t charges blazoned as proper regarded as not violating even if you are, say, on Jupiter?

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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29 August 2010 12:34
 

Daniel C. Boyer;78852 wrote:

Do we have blazons on the ones that involve proper? And I’m not sure what you mean about the continent—aren’t charges blazoned as proper regarded as not violating even if you are, say, on Jupiter?


I don’t know about blazoning proper on the Continent; I assume so.  My point was that a coat of arms that has a red heart on a blue field is the same coat of arms whether it’s blazoned "Azure a heart gules" or "Azure a heart proper."  If someone is willing to accept "proper" as valid, then he can’t score a coat that happens to be blazoned "gules" as a violation of the tincture rule.  Thus, depending on the blazoning convention, the goose heads of Gas i Fyn might be argent on or, or they might be proper on or.

 

I think the scans that Denny posted had the English-language blazons; unfortunately they seem to have been removed.  I have no idea whether the English-language blazons were Heim’s or someone else’s, or whether they were based on an authoritative blazon in the original language or or on paintings of the arms.

 
Donnchadh
 
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Donnchadh
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04 September 2010 11:38
 

they were ‘removed’ because of imageshack having a feekin tech problem with my account. they lost ALL of my damn pics, every feekin one of them, which is why i’m talkin to Andy’s friend Ce to design me a new website since mine was abandoned by it’s webmaster over a year ago and clearly imageshack can’t protect my images from loss.

i did not remove them myself as was asked of me in PM.

 

i have no access to add into a post that is older than 24 hours, so i have no idea how to add them back in, which i was going to try by adding them to my portfolio here, which i cleared out to be able to do that instead of using imageshack, but i still can’t add them back in even if i did that. so i have no way of fixin what the feek imageshack did.

 
Donnchadh
 
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Donnchadh
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04 September 2010 11:59
Donnchadh
 
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Donnchadh
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04 September 2010 12:00
Joseph McMillan
 
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Joseph McMillan
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04 September 2010 12:59
 

I found online the original source from which Heim took his examples of Irish arms.  It’s at http://www.maproom.org/00/47/index.php.  Everyone can look through the plates and make up his or her own mind about the credibility of this source, and what that implies for the quality of scholarship that draws conclusions from it.

 
Donnchadh
 
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Donnchadh
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04 September 2010 23:01
 

in three different editions of MacLysaght’s work the printer, or artist—am inclined to believe printer—has incorrectly "emblazoned" the "blazons". so, am i to throw his research out to because of that? i don’t think so.

in this case, i will agree with the calling into question of his honor, character, scholarship if i have a clear access to the "blazons" where i can then determine if Heim ignored the "blazon" if it was correct, but then embraced the incorrect "emblazons" thus giving him the images you say he wanted to find to justify his ‘opinions’.

 

we’ve all seen plenty of ‘artists’ here and elsewhere (bucketshops) who completely butcher blazon after blazon with their emblazonments. that, plus the three mix ups in MacLysaghts editions, gives me pause to conclude that Heim was a fraud due to some poor/incorrect/incomplete emblazons. guess i’m silly that way.

 
Donnchadh
 
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Donnchadh
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04 September 2010 23:02
 

besides after going through them most are correct versions (some correct excepting minor errors in position), albeit poor, of what i can find in MacLysaght or Burke. not all, but most. that plus the incomplete emblazons leads me to believe terrible emblazonment(s) by the publisher. but what do i know…

 
Joseph McMillan
 
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05 September 2010 11:29
 

Donnchadh;78927 wrote:

in this case, i will agree with the calling into question of his honor, character, scholarship if i have a clear access to the "blazons" where i can then determine if Heim ignored the "blazon" if it was correct, but then embraced the incorrect "emblazons" thus giving him the images you say he wanted to find to justify his ‘opinions’.

we’ve all seen plenty of ‘artists’ here and elsewhere (bucketshops) who completely butcher blazon after blazon with their emblazonments. that, plus the three mix ups in MacLysaghts editions, gives me pause to conclude that Heim was a fraud due to some poor/incorrect/incomplete emblazons. guess i’m silly that way.


Denny,

 

First, no one’s calling into question Heim’s honor or character, so please get off that soapbox. Scholarship is a different matter.

 

Second, there are no blazons. There are only the pictures. As a heraldic scholar, Heim should have at least suspected that many of them were at least questionable, without even having to know anything about Irish or English heraldry in particular. For example, would you take at face value an emblazonment that showed:

 

- arms or quarterings of a single tincture plain?

- arms parted per pale of the same tincture?

- arms with ordinaries and charges of the same tincture as the field?

 

Or would you say, "wait a second, there’s something screwy about this?"

 

Wouldn’t you pursue at least a couple of these in a more credible source—oh, say, Burke’s General Armory—where you could discover that the Cunningham shakefork is not Argent on Argent but Sable on Argent, and the arms of Grey are barry Argent and Azure, not Argent bars on Argent, etc., etc.?  Having discovered that, might you then chase down some of the examples of Argent on Or, where you’d find that the Logan piles are correctly Sable, not Argent; that the McGill martlets are on a field Gules, not Argent; that the O’Rourke lions are Sable, not Argent (and not contourny); that the Gilroy dolphins are Azure, not Or?

 

How many mistakes would you have to find before you decided to toss this book into the trash rather than using it to support a hypothesis of any kind?

 

And one other thing: MacLysaght’s Irish Families was published more than 40 years before Heim’s Or and Argent. If Heim wanted a reliable sampling of Irish arms to work from, wouldn’t it have been more sensible to use the authoritative work of the first Chief Herald than an obscure and clearly unprofessional publication of no authority—unless he was so bent on proving his theory that any kind of "evidence" was persuasive?

 

Again, this does not prove bad morals.  We all tend to accept evidence that supports what we already think and discount evidence that doesn’t.  Good scholars are aware of this and try to take steps to guard against letting this psychological disposition slant their work.  Heim apparently didn’t.

 
Donnchadh
 
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Donnchadh
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07 September 2010 23:41
 

Joseph McMillan;78938 wrote:

Denny,

First, no one’s calling into question Heim’s honor or character, so please get off that soapbox. Scholarship is a different matter.

Joe, where i come from it does. if someone intentionally/deliberately skews results in order to gain a favorable advantage that is a character flaw. so, no soapbox to get off of. i suppose i will chalk this up to sub-cultural differences.


Quote:

Second, there are no blazons. There are only the pictures. As a heraldic scholar, Heim should have at least suspected that many of them were at least questionable, without even having to know anything about Irish or English heraldry in particular. For example, would you take at face value an emblazonment that showed:

- arms or quarterings of a single tincture plain?

- arms parted per pale of the same tincture?

- arms with ordinaries and charges of the same tincture as the field?

 

Or would you say, "wait a second, there’s something screwy about this?"

emphasis mine. this is fine then. this is what i said in my post above. if this is the case then i am inclined to put more weight into the anti-Heim Or and Argent argument that is prevalent. it isn’t, however, the take i got reading my copy of Or and Argent. i will re-read it with this in mind now.


Quote:

Wouldn’t you pursue at least a couple of these in a more credible source—oh, say, Burke’s General Armory—where you could discover that the Cunningham shakefork is not Argent on Argent but Sable on Argent, and the arms of Grey are barry Argent and Azure, not Argent bars on Argent, etc., etc.?

yes i would, which is why i said what i did about the blazons that in the post above.


Quote:

Having discovered that, might you then chase down some of the examples of Argent on Or, where you’d find that the Logan piles are correctly Sable, not Argent; that the McGill martlets are on a field Gules, not Argent; that the O’Rourke lions are Sable, not Argent (and not contourny); that the Gilroy dolphins are Azure, not Or?

again, yes. again, refer to above.


Quote:

How many mistakes would you have to find before you decided to toss this book into the trash rather than using it to support a hypothesis of any kind?

understood and agree, again refer to above.


Quote:

And one other thing: MacLysaght’s Irish Families was published more than 40 years before Heim’s Or and Argent. If Heim wanted a reliable sampling of Irish arms to work from, wouldn’t it have been more sensible to use the authoritative work of the first Chief Herald than an obscure and clearly unprofessional publication of no authority—unless he was so bent on proving his theory that any kind of "evidence" was persuasive?

yes. and no. while i place great merit in MacLysaght’s work, many do not. he is not universally recognized as worth much in some heraldic circles including some of the folks i talked to within the office of the chief herald. so, in this case i would say yes, but others would say no and perhaps Heim was one of those. i simply don’t know.


Quote:

Again, this does not prove bad morals.  We all tend to accept evidence that supports what we already think and discount evidence that doesn’t.  Good scholars are aware of this and try to take steps to guard against letting this psychological disposition slant their work.  Heim apparently didn’t.

again, i disagree here. again, where i come from if someone is doing research with a bias and intentionally ignores facts and worse—fabricates facts—to better his case that is a major no-no and very much a character flaw. this is where i’m coming from and why i say questioning his motives is in fact questioning his character. again i will chalk this up to different understandings in different parts of the country or maybe between different types of people (i’m not a research type of guy and am not familiar with what those people would think).

 
George Lucki
 
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George Lucki
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09 September 2010 15:47
 

The rule of tincture - simply a very useful guideline for good design. A good rule that should not be bent without good design or symbolic reason and without an appreciation fo the diminished visual effect of gold on silver or vice versa. Not an absolute and not to be dismissed. Very rarely ignored by good heraldists.

 
Michael F. McCartney
 
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Michael F. McCartney
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09 September 2010 15:49
 

General comment, not addressing Heim specifically—but I think one can distinguish between conscious & unconscious bias; & while both are regrettable, only one is disreputable.  (well, both can damage one’s reputation as a scholar, but not as a good person)