A System of Heraldry - Clan Strachan Society

OFTHEFURR VAIR. 19
cent, argent, charged with five imucbetmes, sable. The Latin:-, call them, maculaminis
Armenia..
UK THE KURR VAIR.
VAIR is the other principal furr in heraldry. Its pieces arc ahv.iy urgent and
azure, as fig. 10. and n. of much esteem with the ancients in lining or
doubling of robes and mantles of Kings, princes, and senators, as heralds tell u ,
and learned-
but diiVer among themselves about the nature of it. The most part,
est of them, tell us, that it is the skin of a little beast like a weasel, called I'm
which Menestrier is says, thus described in a manuscript in the Vatican at Rome,
" Yarns est bertia parvula paulo amplior quam Mustek, a re nomen sortita, namin
" ventre candicat, in dorso cinereo colore variatur, adeoque eleganti, ut pellis ejus
"
in deliciis habeatur, nee nisi excellentibus viris, &- mulieribus convenire judica-
"
tur in urbibus bene moratis." From this beast Varus, whose back is blue, and
belly white, they bring Vuir ; its proper colours, as I have said, being azure and
urgent. And when the head and feet of the beast are taken from its skin, it resembles
much the figure of vair used in heraldry, as Sir George Mackenzie and
John Feme observe in their above-mentioned books.
Others, again, affirm, that this furr is not called vair from the beast Varus, but
from vari'j vellere, being composed of pieces of skins of various colours sewed together
and when ; they latin this furr, they say, Anna variata ex all/if
pellibus
5" cteruleis, so blazons Mr Gibbon for the arms of Beauchamp, an eminent man
in the reign of Edward I. who was at the siege of Carlaverock in Scotland.
The learned Uredus, in his Blazons of Vair, says, " Scutum vario vellere impres-
" sum ;" and so, with others, will have vair come from the Latin word vario, to
vary and change.
Some latin vair, not from the various colours, but from the forms of the pieces
of the furr, which seem to represent little shields, and so say, Farias pe lies scutula-
tas. And Le Traphe d'Arms will have these pieces of vair to represent pots,
bells, or cups, ranged in a right line, of which some seem turned upside down,
others upright, as tig. n. Sometimes the cups, or bells, are ranged in such sort,
that the points of one of the blue immediately touches another of the same colour,
as do these of the colour argent ; and this they call contre vair, as fig. 12. And
some heralds latin vair from the form of its pieces, which they take to represent
caps or hats ; as Uredus, in the Blazon of Guissnes, a French seigniory, and that of
the arms of St Pole, being gules, three pales, vair, a chief, or, are thus latined by
him, Scutum coccineum tribus palis vellere petasato impressis, lemniscatum,
summitate deaurata : The word petasus, signifies a cap or hat with a broad
brim ; so that for vair, the Latins ordinarily say, " Scutum vellere petasato argen-
" teo vicissim & csruleo impressum," the arms of the family of Varana in Italy,
which are canting arms, vair being relative to the name. And Menestrier tells us,
the arms of Beauframont in France being vair, are also canting, and relative to the
name, who will have the form of the pieces of vair to represent bells, which Beaufroy
signifies befroy, a belfroy, a watch-tower or steeple,
also an alarm-bell. The
like may be said of the surname of Belches with us, who carry vair equivocally,
relative to the name Belches.
We meet with grand vair and menu vair in French books. The first consists
only of three tracts or ranges of pieces of vair; so the fewer they are the pi<
are the larger, and latined by Sylvester Petra Sancta, " Petasi decumani grandiores."
Menu vair, or little vair, is where there are more tracts than four ..
; and
this is the ordinary vair used in armories, which is always of the tinctures argent
and azure, as fig. 10. and n. Which tinctures we do not express in blazon, but
only the word vair, which is always supposed to be of these two colours. But if
the pieces of vair be of other tinctures, then they are to be expressed, by saying
vaire or vairy of gules, and or, fig. 13. : As
these of the Ferrers, earls of Derb) ,
and their descendants Lords Ferrers of Chartley in England, who carried vaire, or,
and gules; thus blazoned by Jacobus Willhelmus Imhoff, in his Treatise, Blaz'jnia:
Regum parlumque MagncE Britannia, " Ferrarii, Comites Derbine & Barones de
"
Chartley, scutum quo utebantur petasis aureis & rubeis variegatum est."