Is it a common practice in Ireland for a husband to display his arms impaled with is wifes? Is it something only common husbands who marry noble wives do?  It just seems like a break from the generally pro-man slant to heraldry…

I ask because Mr Power shared this beautiful achievement in another thread and it struck me as a little odd.

Everett,

I must say the topic of your thread lead me to a different thought:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/43/Impaled.gif

http://www.uh.edu/~cfreelan/vampires/tepes.gif

Vlad Tepech (aka "Vlad the Impaler" and "Dracula")

—Guy

Thank you, I thought I was alone on that one

Guy Power wrote:

I must say the topic of your thread lead me to a different thought:

—Guy

Spotting this thread title while looking over my shoulder, my wife gave me a bit of a short evil laugh.

I guess she agrees…

PS- I have no idea about Ireland

To be boringly unwitty, impaling is the normal way in both the UK and Ireland to combine marital arms.  It certainly has nothing to do with female equality in the heraldic world—a wife was traditionally not allowed to display her own arms except in this impaled format, with her husband’s crest, while a husband had the option of displaying his arms in their original form, impaled with hers, or both, depending on the setting.  (E.g., he might have his own arms alone on his seal and writing paper, but impaled with hers on the family silver and carriage.)

Joseph McMillan wrote:

To be boringly unwitty, impaling is the normal way in both the UK and Ireland to combine marital arms.

The caveat being that is supposedly (we’re getting into a real technicality here in terms of present heraldic practice) restricted to "times of peace" (you do not carry impaled arms into battle if a father or brothers are in being), unless the wife is an heraldic heiress, in which case it would be on an escutcheon of pretence.