Now national heraldry is often derived from the bearings of families or chiefs. Of such is our royal standard with its Plantagenet leopards and red lion of the Scottish kings. Though in the Irish harp we seem to get a purely national emblem, strictly speaking it is the heraldic bearing of one of the four provinces—Leinster.
These heraldic bearings and badges had their origin in very remote times, and take us back to earliest forms of human society, to the gens, and the tribe, who named themselves after some animal or plant, and adopted it as the distinguishing mark and ensign of the family to which they belonged, or to such primitive times as we read of in Mr. William Morris's "Roots of the Mountains" and "House of the Wolfings," where he speaks of "The House of the Steer" and "The House of the Raven." The distinguishing badges would be carved or painted over the porch, and borne upon the shield of the chief and the banner in battle.
In feudal times the practice was continued until family heraldry, owing to intermarriage, became very complicated, and family shields much quartered.
Distinctness and definite characterization of form were highly necessary, since in battle it was important to distinguish your enemies from your friends, and the banner of the chieftain, the knight, or king, would be the rallying point for their followers and retainers.
Heraldry became regulated by strict rules, and is now called a science, though its vitality and meaning have departed, except in an antiquarian and archæological sense. It has, however, a certain decorative value to the designer, as illustrating the principle of counterchange of colours, and from the heraldry of the mediæval period much may be learned in point of decorative treatment.
TYPICAL FORMS OF SHIELDS:
Norman Shield. From a MS. of the 12th Century in the National Library, Paris.
Ancient Roman Shield (Scutum) Trajan's Column.
Ancient Greek Shield. Cylix Pinacotheca. Munich
Gothic. Shield of John de Heere, 1332, from a brass at Brussels.
Shield of Edward the Black Prince, 1376.
Duke of Saxony, 1500.
SIDONIA of Saxony, 1510.
BRASS. De Rivis, 1567, Brussels.
Renascence Shield, with helmet & mantling Painted glass, Lichfield Cathedral.
The shield itself varies considerably in form. There is the round shield of the ancients used both by Greeks and Norsemen. This with the Greeks had pieces cut out at the sides sometimes. There was also a moon-shaped shield, similar in form to the shield used by our old invaders the Danes. Then we get the parallelogram, kite-shaped and oval shields of the Romans; the kite-shaped shield of the Normans; the lancet pointed shield, cut square at the top, of the first crusades. The Gothic shield becomes more variously hollowed and shaped with the development of plate armour, and in the fifteenth century frequently has a space cut out on the outer edge to allow of the tilting lance of the knight passing through without interfering with the guard. In Renascence times there was a revival of classical and fanciful forms in shields, and a return to its original form in the escutcheon, the term being derived from the Latin (cutis) word for skin or hide, which covered the ancient shields: but with the use of fire-arms shields declined, until the small steel buckler for the short-sword became its last working representative.
The character and the art of heraldic devices varies very much according to these changes in methods of warfare, and was also affected by the state of the arts generally.