Category: History

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The Two Mysteries of Dalziel

If you have ever taken an interest in heraldry, and more particularly, Scottish heraldry, there will have been a moment when you have asked yourself: what’s with the naked guy??

The coat of arms of Dalziel is heraldically described as “Sable, a man’s body proper” – which is to say, black, with a naked guy on it. It should be noted that “proper” in heraldic terms refers to something being displayed in its natural colour – a lion vert is green; a lion proper is yellow – rather than any armorial judgement on the inappropriateness or otherwise of full frontal nudity.

A heraldic display including the Dalziel coat of arms showing a naked man on a black background, and the motto I Dare.
The heraldic supporters also look a bit baffled, if not slightly embarrassed.

Whether the naked man is proper in non-heraldic terms is one question. The larger question, of course, is what on earth is he doing there? Who thought this was a good idea?? And why???

The story goes that many many years ago, back in the reign of King Kenneth “Kinslayer” the Second, i.e. not long before dates went from having three digits to having four, a beloved kinsman of King Kenneth the Kinslayer was slain – not, in this case, by Kenneth – and he was Not Amused. (King Kenneth, that is, though the kinsman was probably not amused either.)

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In Praise of Old Custom: Mourning Clothes

It is time, I believe, to bring back mourning. Not mourning as in grieving – that has never left us, nor will while this world lasts – but the clothing which denotes its presence.

The West is not very good at either of them, for the most part. We expect people to “get over it” or “move on” in not much more than the standard three days bereavement leave, and as for the clothes – well. When I tell you there is a company offering such products as tees and tank tops with slogans like “live, love, grieve”, “grief vibes” and “grieving AF”, you will see how far we have come from the days when mourning clothing was both dignified and generally recognized.

In the foreground, a young woman in black trimmed with white. In the background, three young women in pastels.
One of these young women is in mourning. Guess which.

This can in part be blamed on the mass deaths of the World Wars – very bad for morale, living in a sea of visible loss – and, going further back than that, the Victorians. The Victorians were huge supporters of people taking time to mourn, but rather overdid it with their strict codification of mourning which was not necessarily connected with your actual emotions. (Not to mention the annoyance when some sour old distant relation dies the moment you get a new outfit, thus preventing you wearing it while it’s still in fashion.)

I do not propose that we return to the suffocating etiquette of the nineteenth century, but that we reintroduce a shared visual vocabulary of loss. To that end, a few suggestions.

Grief varies in intensity over time (hopefully in an overall lightening trend). Mourning clothes should reflect this.

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In Praise of Old Technology: the Fountain Pen

I am far from suggesting that everyone should be an old-fashioned fruitcake like myself, but if there’s one Old Technology I think everyone should use, it’s the fountain pen.

A black and gold fountain pen, uncapped, rests on a page covered in black handwriting.

The basic ballpoint – be it clicky or Cristal – is ubiquitous. More than 100 billion of the latter had been sold by late 2006, most of which will now be in landfills around the globe. If you get a free goody bag from an event or business, you can pretty much guarantee that there will be at least one ballpoint in there. At some point – when the ink runs out, or dries out, or you begin to feel oppressed by the sheer number of these things cluttering up your desk or other surfaces – it goes to the dump.

Millions if not billions of these cheap disposable pens are churned out each year, and millions if not billions of them go to the landfill each year, packed in with the trashy polyester clothing and the masses of disposable nappies, all merrily leaching their toxic guck for decades if not centuries to come.

The fountain pen, by contrast, is refillable, repairable, and, if properly cared for, will last for decades of use.

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