Hi Everyone.

Im posting this because i need some help. i got an assignment from school to draw up a coat of arms. For Jim from ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN . this is what the description says:

"On the scutcheon we’ll have a bend OR in the dexter base, a saltire MURREY in the fess, with a dog, couchant, for common charge, and under his foot a chain embattled, for slavery, with a chevron VERT in a chief engrailed, and three invected lines on a field AZURE, with the nombril points rampant on a dancette indented; crest, a runaway nigger, SABLE, with his bundle over his shoulder on a bar sinister; and a couple of gules for supporters, which is you and me; motto, MAGGIORE FRETTA, MINORE OTTO. Got it out of a book—means the more haste the less speed."

i posted the one i have on flicker, hers the link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/77181537@N00/4375728540/

its hard for me since English is not my first language and im not so familiar with the terms. i have researched to draw what i already have.

its just a rough sketch so to speak, before im gone hand draw it. but i am missing some stuff and i donno who else to ask. if someone who is more familiar with the heraldic expression, could set things straight so i could get to the final work,i would be so grateful.im in hurry, HELP hehe. thank you!!!

Mari,

It’s not a bad try.  Members of this group tried to draw Jim’s arms from Twain’s description with little more success.  There are two problems—the first is that English-language heraldry uses an extremely archaic and specialized vocabulary; the second is that Twain is parodying heraldic language and pretensions and therefore uses the heraldic vocabulary wrong.  Fortunately, he left his own drawing of these arms as an illustration in the first edition of the book.

http://etext.virginia.edu/images/modeng/public/Twa2Huc/twah385b.jpg

But here’s the radically different interpretation that one of our members, Mike Swanson, came up with working only from the written description ("blazon"):

http://americanheraldry.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=24&d=1153880021

On your own drawing, rather than putting the "ordinaries"—the bend, the chevron, and saltire—directly on the field of Jim’s shield, you’ve put them on little shields.  Most heralds would interpret the blazon as having them directly on the main shield, running from one edge to the other.  But since one of Tom Sawyer’s "errors" in composing the shield was that he put more than one ordinary on the same shield (not normally done!), there’s no reason you shouldn’t resolve the difficulty the way you have.

The only real mistake is that the animal you have is a lion, not a dog as Tom specified.

Remarkably well done, especially for someone working in her second language!

well i have the photo you have given, the one from the book but according to my teacher that’s not correct.yes i know ther has to be a dog, ill fix that, but is there anything else from the text that im missing on my coat of arms…

Thank you for the replay.

Pretty good try, and as Joseph said…especially somebody working from a second language.  The difficulty in understanding the blazon (word description of the coat of arms) is that most of the words don’t even appear in English, such as bendlet, or saltire.  Then, all the colors aren’t even in English either…for example Vert (Green), Argent (White), and so on.  So I can only imagine your difficulty, if English isn’t even your first language haha….so cudos to you :D.

Is there a way i could see this Mike Swansons version?

lissabonna;75144 wrote:

Is there a way i could see this Mike Swansons version?

I believe it’s this one…

http://americanheraldry.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=24&d=1153880021

I would go more by what Mike Swanson has done…being that he actually understands blazons…unlike Mr. Twain obviously

hei Alid… i cant see any link, can u post it agian whetevr THIS ONE IS, is ehhe. thank you so much!!!

Mari

You can’t see the image?  Here I’ll post the link…and an image if I upload it myself…let me know if you can see it.

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p122/BrokenChainsX/Huck.jpg

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p122/BrokenChainsX/Huck.jpg

By the way…what grade are you in that you’re getting a project like this?  Seems like kind of an extreme request for the average person…since most people can’t understand a blazon.  Especially the one that you posted.

Thank you very much Aild, yes i can see the image now. thats a lot of help, as a reference.did i say thank you.Well you are right, its hard for an average person,well anyone really whos not studied that.So im very happy i found you guys here.

Im an art student thats why i was asked to do it, but this is way out of my expertise, i mean i can draw the design , but only if i know where to draw what.The one i did before was huge effort after countles googleing and reading. hehee….ill get to fix my mistakes now

Well, it’s pretty presumptuous for your teacher to say that Twain’s drawing is wrong, since it’s his book.

The fact is that the blazon Tom Sawyer gave cannot be drawn correctly—it’s heraldic gibberish.  And that’s not because Twain didn’t understand heraldry; it’s not Twain who’s speaking, remember, but one of his characters.  In any case, the whole point is that Twain here is ridiculing what he considered an absurd fascination with heraldry and nobility and so on within his society.  Remember, this is the same book that gave us the phony Duke and Dauphin.

Twain’s attitude toward heraldry and related subjects is summed up in what he had to say about Sir Walter Scott, the father of medieval revivalism, in Life on the Mississippi.  The entire tirade can be read at http://www.twainquotes.com/SirWalterScott.html, but is summed up in the first two sentences:

Quote:

Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by his single might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it back; sets the world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government; with the sillinesses and emptinesses, sham grandeurs, sham gauds, and sham chivalries of a brainless and worthless long-vanished society. He did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual that ever wrote.

Heraldry would probably fall within the category "sham gauds."

Oh poor Mr Samuel L Clemens. And then he writes his own overshugared book about St Joan which

discredits him as one who may judge Medieval imagery in literature… I only wonder if this philippic

of his is not a deliberate exaggerration. He certainly believed that to make weakness laughable

is a way of helping the weak, at least some of them.

Meanwhile may I post a sketch by a friend of mine, Prof. Shelkovenko GHA[R], who recently made

his own effort to interpret the text with a greater seriousness than it was originally intended.

Pity, I have problems just now with sending it in a more convenient size. Excuse me for that!

http://geraldika.ru/files/090504042020689.jpg

It seems that the lonely term "rampant" is somehow lost in the blazon. Well, the charge called sinople,

in the same lonely form, is even more frequently met with in jocular blazons.