Showing posts with label heraldry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label heraldry. Show all posts

October 5 - Unicorn Questing Month on Mackinac Island, Michigan


  Posted on October 5, 2021


This is an update of my post published on October 5, 2010:




October was considered Unicorn Questing Season on this resort island for many years. A publicist named Bill Rabe issued thousands of questing licenses and held Unicorn Follies at Mackinac's Grand Hotel.

Note that questing for unicorns isn't necessarily *hunting* unicorns. However, Rabe's group was sometimes referred to as Unicorn Hunters, and the license doesn't make it absolutely clear whether hunters and questers were allowed to actually kill unicorns or merely to take them home.


To quote from the regulations:

Unicorns may be taken with:
Serious Intent
Iambic Pentameter
General levity
Sweet talk

However, elsewhere in the regulations is the ominous note that, in October, bows and arrows may also be used to “take” unicorns.

Although Rabe retired from his position as Lake Superior State University publicist in 1987 and has since died, the university still allows people to download unicorn hunting regulations and licenses from its website.


Symbol and heraldry...

The mythological unicorn has been thought of as either fierce or gentle, depending on the source, but the creature is always good, a symbol of purity and innocence. The single horn is sometimes considered to be an antidote to poison.




In medieval times, unicorns were sometimes emblazoned on shields or embroidered on banners. These kinds of decorative identifiers put onto armor and banners is part of heraldry. Unicorns in heraldry usually have, in addition to a horse head and body and a spiral horn, a goat's beard and cloven hooves, and a lion's tail. A lion and a unicorn support the United Kingdom coat of arms.


Found in cabinets of curiosities...

Although the thousands of unicorn questers of Mackinac Island and the millions throughout history and from all over the world have never caught a live unicorn, nor brought into the public eye a dead one, many people do own “unicorn” horns. Natural history displays called cabinets of curiosities, for example, often proudly exhibited beautiful spiral horns said to come from unicorns. Most of these have been proven to be the tusk of a narwhal.

Above, Narwhal Tusk
Below, Narwhal




Celebrate unicorns!

Unicorns are usually portrayed as white, so you might want to color a nice background for the unicorns on these coloring pages.

Or learn how to draw a unicorn yourself. 


Here is arguably the most famous unicorn song in the English language. 

And here is another song, this one with animation.


 


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November 27 – Happy Birthday, Frederic Crowninshield

Posted on November 27, 2018

Today's famous birthday was born on this date in 1845 into a wealthy and important Bostonian family. Frederic Crowninshield graduated from Harvard and became an artist, illustrator, and art teacher. When he was older, he became the first president of the National Society of Mural Painters and, later, president of the Fine Arts Federation and director of the American Academy in Rome. 





One thing I find interesting about this artist is his name. Crowninshield, of course, is three words strung together in one name: Crown In Shield. I wondered how such a name came to exist!

It turns out that a Danish man named Johann Caspar Richter moved to a little Germany village, and there he married and started a family. The village they lived in was named Kronenschieldt (Crowninshield), and I gather that Johann decided to add the town's name to his own, using the German word "von" (of/from), to seem more grand:
Johann Caspar Richter von Kronenschieldt

(Many noble Germans had and still have "von" and then a town or city name at the end of their surnames, but in early modern times, many commoners adopted the practice as well.)

Johann also invented a coat of arms that would go with that name. It of course featured a crown on a shield! 

The important thing to remember here is that he designed this coat of arms out of nowhere - by which I mean that he just sat down and invented it to make the family seem more important than it was. 

(Most coats of arms used then had long family histories going back many centuries. But of course, ultimately, they were ALL made up to make families seem grand!)

One of Johann's sons was Johannes Caspar Richter von Kronenschieldt. It was he who traveled to Boston, in what was then the colony of Massachusetts, and rejiggered his name into an English version of the looooonnng Germanic name:
John Caspar Crowninshield

Note that Richter, the original last name of the Danish immigrant to Germany, is now lost!

That move and name change were way back in the late 1600s, but the Crowninshield name continues on today.

In honor of Frederick Crowninshield's ancestors, you might want to invent your own coat of arms.

Here are a few more resources for this project. 







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October 5, 2010



Unicorn Questing Month – Mackinac Island, Michigan

October was considered Unicorn Questing Season on this resort island for many years. A publicist named Bill Rabe issued thousands of questing licenses and held Unicorn Follies at Mackinac's Grand Hotel.

Note that questing for unicorns isn't necessarily hunting unicorns. However, Rabe's group was sometimes referred to as Unicorn Hunters, and the license doesn't make it absolutely clear whether hunters and questers were allowed to actually kill unicorns or merely to take them home. To quote from the regulations:

Unicorns may be taken with:
Serious Intent
Iambic Pentameter
General levity
Sweet talk

However, elsewhere in the regulations is the ominous note that, in October, bows and arrows may also be used to “take” unicorns.

Although Rabe retired from his position as Lake Superior State University publicist in 1987 and has since died, the university still allows people to download unicorn hunting regulations and licenses from its website.


Symbol and heraldry...

The mythological unicorn has been thought of as fierce or gentle but always good, a symbol of purity and innocence. The single horn is sometimes considered to be an antidote to poison.

In medieval times, unicorns were sometimes emblazoned on shields or embroidered on banners. These kinds of decorative identifiers put onto armor and banners is part of heraldry. Unicorns in heraldry usually have, in addition to a horse head and body and a spiral horn, a goat's beard and cloven hooves, and a lion's tail. A lion and a unicorn support the United Kingdom coat of arms.

Found in cabinets of curiosities...

Although the thousands of unicorn questers of Mackinac Island and the millions throughout history and from all over the world have never caught a live unicorn, nor brought into the public eye a dead one, many people do own “unicorn” horns. Natural history displays called cabinets of curiosities, for example, often proudly exhibited beautiful spiral horns said to come from unicorns. Most of these have been proven to be the tusk of a narwhal.


Celebrate unicorns!

Unicorns are usually white, so you might want to color a nice background for the unicorns on these coloring pages.

Or let Lucy Learns teach you how to draw a unicorn yourself. 

Here is a jigsaw puzzle of a unicorn and a fairy princess, and here is a jigsaw with mother-daugher unicorns. 

Here is arugably the most famous unicorn song in the English language. 
And here is another song, this one with animation. 

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