Waverley; or, 'Tis sixty years since — Volume 1Scott, Walter
History
Waverley; or, 'Tis sixty years since — Volume 1
Scott, Walter
Historical fiction; Jacobite Rebellion, 1745-1746 -- Fiction; Scotland -- History -- 18th century -- Fiction
With this excuse, or explanation, Waverley was silenced, if not
satisfied; but he could not help testifying some displeasure
against the Blessed Bear, which had given rise to the quarrel, nor
refrain from hinting that the sanctified epithet was hardly
appropriate. The Baron observed, he could not deny that 'the Bear,
though allowed by heralds as a most honourable ordinary, had,
nevertheless, somewhat fierce, churlish, and morose in his
disposition (as might be read in Archibald Simson, pastor of
Dalkeith's 'Hieroglyphica Animalium') and had thus been the type
of many quarrels and dissensions which had occurred in the house
of Bradwardine; of which,' he continued, 'I might commemorate mine
own unfortunate dissension with my third cousin by the mother's
side, Sir Hew Halbert, who was so unthinking as to deride my
family name, as if it had been QUASI BEAR-WARDEN; a most uncivil
jest, since it not only insinuated that the founder of our house
occupied such a mean situation as to be a custodier of wild
beasts, a charge which, ye must have observed, is only entrusted
to the very basest plebeians; but, moreover, seemed to infer that
our coat-armour had not been achieved by honourable actions in
war, but bestowed by way of paranomasia, or pun, upon our family
appellation,--a sort of bearing which the French call armoires
parlantes, the Latins arma cantantia, and your English authorities
canting heraldry, [Footnote: See Note 12] being indeed a species of
emblazoning more befitting canters, gaberlunzies, and such like
mendicants, whose gibberish is formed upon playing upon the word,
than the noble, honourable, and useful science of heraldry, which
assigns armorial bearings as the reward of noble and generous
actions, and not to tickle the ear with vain quodlibets, such as
are found in jestbooks.' Of his quarrel with Sir Hew he said
nothing more than that it was settled in a fitting manner.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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