Hedgehogs are known to creep into vineyards when grapes are ripe to climb the vines and shake off the fruit. They eat not this bounty forthwith, but roll on their backs, impaling their quills in ripe harvest. Back to their burrows the urchins trundle, plethora of grapes on their spines, to nourish their young.
From an urchin on beggars row did our subject grow into a seasoned member of our Society. They have grown from the nourished young hedgehog, becoming a gentle who cares for the well being of others in body and spirit, ready to give nourishment even while navigating their own transition from urchin to adult.
Thus, today, we do award unto them arms, Quarterly argent and sable, a hedgehog statant gardant gules, to be borne by Charlie Orr alone. Done this Seventh day of August, Anno Societatis LIII at the Pennsic War in the Barony-Marche of the Debatable Lands
Note: Introduce as “Lady Charlie Orr”
Words, Illumination, and Calligraphy by Aislinn Chiabach (Pronounced Ace-lynn Key-uh-bok) and Bróccín MacIvyr
The Blog of Mrs. Tiggy-winkle
I have known Charlie their entire life both mundanely and in the Society. I was thrilled to do the work on her scroll. I was assigned this project, en toto and asked my husband Lord Bróccín MacIvyr to do the calligraphy for the scroll. Something he had recently taken up and excelled in.
This was my first gender neutral scroll. Knowing them personally I was able to consult with friends and family as to how Charlie would want to be specifically addressed. I included a note for the heralds detailing how they would like to be introduced as “Lady Charlie Orr” while the scroll would have their full registered name of Charlotte Orr and the rest of the pronouns would be gender neutral.
Charlie has registered arms: Quarterly argent and sable, a hedgehog statant gardant gules. I decided to use this as inspiration and spent some time researching hedgehogs in the time periods of the SCA.
The early poet Archilochus (c. 680- 645 BC) left us fragments of his writing, with variants of this quote about hedgehogs:
The fox knows many things; the hedgehog one great thing.
The fox knows many tricks; and the hedgehog only one; but that is the best one of all.
The Rochester Bestiary, from England, approximately 1230, that depicted the hedgehog in several panels rolling on the ground of a vineyard. The thought of the time was that the hedgehog would do this to get the grapes stuck in their quills. At this point they would take the grapes home to the underground den, flip themselves upside down at the entrance and let the babies eat the grapes directly from their backs.
An early name for the hedgehog was Urchin, which led to a wonderful reference to now infamous Urchin’s Row at Pennsic.
For the style of illumination, I took inspiration from a 9th-century manuscript known as the Aratea. It is found in the British Museum and is almost entirely made up of Calligrams - a word or piece of text in which the design and layout of the letters creates a visual image related to the meaning of the words themselves.
I styled the hedgehog similarly to the beasts and figures in the Aratea and Bróccín Did the calligraphy.
It was a pleasure to work on this scroll; to craft something special for someone I have known for so long.
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