Hi everyone! For those who would like to join in, I'm running an interactive creative approaches to history course in December based on a real medieval murder case. I'm a medievalist by training and teach Adult Learning courses at Cardiff University's Centre for Continuing and Professional Education (CPE), and for December I'm teaming up with… Continue reading Medieval Murder and Modern Day Detectives
I love this – I’ve published on arms and seals and the uses of medieval iconography in my academic life, but this is a really fun exercise and might be useful for self-reflection.
Some medieval facts:
> If you weren’t important enough to have your own arms, you would bear those of your lord. For example, William Marshall (1146/7-1219) started off in the household of the Tankervilles and bore their arms until he was allowed to carry his own. [You’ll notice he was very long-lived: nobles often lived beyond 60, with the benefit of good constitution and diet etc].>There was a sense of visual unity in family crests, but individuals chose what went on them as they inherited the title and lands. Some chose to adopt their father’s, but add something of their own; their son might revert to a further direct paternal ancestor (because patrilineal primogenture was the model of inheritance) and adopt their great-grandfather’s arms without changing it. It depended on what they wanted to convey!
More on my blog (on hiatus): melissajulianjones.wordpress.comLoved this post!! Recommend giving this blog a follow.
I’ve been trying to make a personal coat of arms (or achievement, as it’s properly known) for a long time now.
First thing’s first: in the UK and many other countries, you can’t just go ahead and design your own coat of arms. To officially acquire one, you have to have one presented to you by the College of Arms. But it’s extremely unlikely they’re ever going to knight me, and if they did, I doubt they’d let me use the one I came up with myself. So, no, this isn’t an official coat of arms.
But it’s a symbol designed using heraldic convention which I could still use to represent myself, especially if I get it copyrighted. So you can do that too, if you have the same peculiar desire to have a coat of arms that I do. (Just don’t go calling yourself a knight on any…
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Happy St David's Day/Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus. I'm late posting this, but let me rectify it by offering you a recipe for Welsh Cakes and Crempogau (Welsh Pancakes). The recipe for crempogau is (apparently) one of the oldest in Wales. They aren't like crepes or American pancakes and take about 55mins to make so allow… Continue reading Happy St David’s Day!
Introduction The vampires of Wales are few and far between, and Aaron only looks at novels featuring vampires set in the Welsh borders. In this post, I start by looking at some of the vampire/vampiric lore in Wales, from Arawn's doomed men of the Hunt to seriously weird tales of vampiric furniture, and then at… Continue reading #AmReading: Wales, Land of the Living Dead III: Welsh Vampire Lore & Vampire Lit (1940s-1997)
Introduction In the previous post we looked at texts featured in Chapter 1 of Jane Aaron's Welsh Gothic, and very briefly at the postcolonial framing of some of these narratives. This post looks at the ghost stories and dark tales that were associated with different parts of Wales, used as inspiration for the Gothic tales of… Continue reading #AmReading: Cambria Gothica II: Welsh Ghostlore & Folklore before 1830
C. M. Rosens 