_Billets_ have been conjectured to be representations of oblong camps, but from the name they would seem to be _letters_. They may have been originally assigned to bearers of important despatches. _Guttée_ is the term applied to a field or charge sprinkled over with drops of gold, silver, blood, tears, &c. according to the tincture. This kind of bearing is said to have originated with the Duke of Anjou, King of Sicily, who, after the loss of that island, appeared at a tournament with a black shield sprinkled with drops of water, to represent tears, thus indicating both his grief and his loss.[97] A warrior returning victorious from battle, with his buckler sprinkled with blood, would, in the early days of heraldry, readily have adopted the bearing afterwards called 'guttée de sang.' In those times the besiegers of a fortress were often assailed with boiling pitch, poured by the besieged through the machicolations of the wall constructed for such purposes. Splashes of this pitch falling upon some besieger's shield, in all probability gave the first idea of 'guttée de poix.' The _fusil_ is like the lozenge, but narrower. Whatever the charge may mean, the name is evidently a corruption of the Fr. _fuseau_, a spindle. The _fret_ may have been borrowed from the architectural ornaments of the interior of a roof, or more probably, from a knotted cord. It is sometimes called =Harington's Knot=, though it is not peculiar to the arms of that family, for it was also borne by the baronial races of Echingham, Audley, and Verdon, and by many other families.[98] My purpose being not to describe all the charges or figures occurring in heraldry, but merely to assign a reasonable origin for those which appear to the uninitiated to have neither propriety nor meaning, I pass by many others, and come to those to which a symbolical sense is more readily attachable, as the heavenly bodies, animals, vegetables, weapons of war, implements of labour, &c. &c. Here I shall merely offer some general remarks, for it is less my object to gratify curiosity on this subject than to excite that attention to it which it really deserves, and therefore I must say, with gentle Dame Julyan, "Bot for to reherce all the signys that be borne in armys it were too long a tarying, nor I can not do hit: _ther be so mony_!"