Woodlice, Slighting, and the Bore of Evil

A cascade of bright yellow cylindrical flowers on a kōwhai tree, seen from below against green foliage and a blue sky.

This is our kōwhai in what I’m fairly sure is only its second year in bloom. As you can see, this lovely legume pushed the boat out – so much so, in fact, that we had frequent visits from tūī, which was delightful.

Interesting Times

Slighting a castle sounds like peering over your glasses at it and saying “well I don’t think much of that”. The actual process of slighting a castle, however, is much more…vigorous. To translate it into Kiwi English, it is the munting of the castle. To translate it into more cosmopolitan English, it is the partial destruction of the castle to a) make it unusable for castley purposes, and b) make it plain that whoever’s castle this was, they lost.

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Circus, Leeches, and the Legal Fiction of the 2nd Baron Stamp

Hello again! As my recovery progresses, I am dipping a toe back into the waters of blogging. Or perhaps that should be dipping seven tiny toes, as I present you with a bit of this and a bit of that, culled from what I have been reading and doing of late.

A decorative mosaic cross hangs on a textured off-white wall above a white mantleshelf over terracotta tiling. On the shelf is a large brown glass jar with a flower arrangement. Long branchy arms swoop out to left and right, with spires of lavender and rosemary rising in the centre.

Speaking of culling, here’s something you can do with your prunings (beside compost them, chip them into mulch, or pile them up for critter habitat). The bulk of the above arrangement is from a branch of maukoro I recently had to remove. Its Latin name is Carmichaelia odorata – though I haven’t noticed any odours yet – and its English name is New Zealand broom, though it’s no relation to the European broom. Rosemary and lavender prunings add a bit of colour, foliage variety, and vertical interest.

Interesting Times

When one hears of legal fiction, one tends to think of John Grisham – but it turns out that the legal system is also capable of producing fictions, albeit not quite so gripping and bestsellery. For example, in English law, if two people in a family die and you can’t tell who died first, the legal fiction holds that the older died first, thus clarifying lines of inheritance.

This legal fiction is the cause of the record for shortest peerage: Wilfred Stamp, the 2nd Baron Stamp, died in the Blitz alongside his father, the 1st Baron Stamp. Since his father was, obviously, the elder, he was deemed to have died before Wilfred, and thus Wilfred technically became the 2nd Baron Stamp. However, as Wilfred had three daughters but no sons, the barony passed to his younger brother Trevor, who would have inherited it even if Wilfred had died first. The only differences were that Trevor became the 3rd Baron Stamp, not the 2nd, and had to pay two lots of death duties.

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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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