so that it is a matter of curiosity to know in what manner they were carried. Leigh and others call them gorges; but the charge properly known by that name is a whirlpool, as borne in the armes parlantes of the family of Gorges.
The mullet, a star-like figure, has been taken to represent the rowel of a spur; but a doubt of this derivation of the charge may be suggested, as the spur of the middle ages had no rowel, but consisted of one sharp spike. Some of the old heralds considered mullets as representations of falling stars—“exhalations inflamed in the aire and stricken back with a cloud”—which, according to Guillim, are sometimes found on the earth like a certain jelly, and assuming the form of the charge. The substance alluded to bears the name of star-jelly. In the Gentleman’s Magazine for 1797, are several communications on this subject, in which there is a great contrariety of opinion, some of the writers contending that it is an animal substance, while others consider it a vegetable. As it is usually found in boggy grounds, Dr. Darwin deemed it a mucilage voided by herons after they have eaten frogs, and Pennant attributed it to gulls. The antient alchemists called it the flower of heaven, and imagined that from it they could procure the universal menstruum; but all their researches ended in discovering that by distillation it yielded some phlegm, volatile salt, and empyreumatic oil.[116]
Personal costume, although mixed up with the very earliest of heraldric devices, furnishes scarcely any regular charges. Excepting shoes, caps, and body-armour, the maunch is almost the only one derived from this source. This charge, a familiar example of which occurs in the arms of the noble family of Hastings, represents an antient fashion of sleeve worn soon after the Conquest, but of such an extravagant form that Leigh blazons it a maunch-maltalé, a badly-cut sleeve; and certainly the example given by him fully justifies the use of that epithet. The taste for a long pendulous addition to the cuff of the sleeve forms one of the most curious features of the female costume of the twelfth century. According to Brydson, the maunch was a distinguished “favour” bestowed on some knights, being part of the dress of the lady or princess who presented it.
The woodcut (no inappropriate tail-piece for the present chapter) delineates several antient forms of this article. Well may Master Leigh remark, “Of thinges of antiquitee growen out of fashion this is one.”
No. 1, Leigh; 3, 4, from Planché’s Hist. Brit. Cost.; 2, Arms of Hastings, from the tomb of W. de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, Westminster Abbey.
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| Mangys be called in armys a sleue. Boke S. A. |
