“No jutty friese,
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird
Hath made his pendant bed, and procreant cradle.”
Macbeth, Act i. sc. 6.
It is depicted in armory with wings close, and in profile, with thighs, but with no visible legs or feet.
The martlet is the appropriate “difference” or mark of cadency for the fourth son. Sylvanus Morgan says: “It modernly used to signify, as that bird seldom lights on land, so younger brothers have little land to rest on but the wings of their own endeavours, who, like the swallows, become the travellers in their seasons.”
The swallow (hirondelle) is the punning cognisance for Arundell. The seal of the town of Arundel is a swallow, Baron Arundell of Wardour bears six swallows for his arms. The great Arundells have as motto, “De Hirundine” (“Concerning the swallow”), and “Nulli præda” (“A prey to none”). A Latin poem of the twelfth century is thus rendered:
“Swift as the swallow, whence his arms’ device
And his own arms are took, enraged he flies
Thro’ gazing troops, the wonder of the field,
And strikes his lance in William’s glittering shield.”
“We find it in Glovers’ roll,” says Planché, “borne by Roger de Merley, clearly as ‘armes parlantes,’ although in a border.” Roger de Merley: “barée d’argent et de goulz à la bordure d’azur, et merlots d’or en le bordure”; showing it was some difference of a family coat.
The Alerion
is a heraldic bird, represented as an eaglet displayed, but without beak or claws. Some writers confound it with the martlet, stating that the alerion is the same bird with its wings displayed or extended. They are first found in the arms of Lorraine, which are blazoned or, on a bend gules, three Alerions argent, and are said to be assumed in commemoration of an extraordinary shot made by Godfrey de Boulogne, “who at one draught of his bow, shooting against David’s Tower in Jerusalem, broched three feetless birds called Alerions, which the House of Lorraine, decending from his race, continued to this day.” It is impossible, says Planché, who broached this wonderful story, but it is perfectly evident that the narrator was the party who drew the longbow, and not the noble Godfrey.
| Alerion displayed. | Heraldic Eagle. |
The letters of the word Alerion appear to be merely an anagram formed by the same letters Loraine, and may account for the birds on the shield (probably eaglets) being called alerions.