Bottesford Moors, Kirton in Lindsey.
_Ladies' Arms borne in a Lozenge_ (Vol. viii., pp. 37. 83. 277. 329.).--The
difference between the fusil and the lozenge is well known to all heralds,
though coach-painters and silversmiths do not {653} always sufficiently
describe it. If BROCTUNA, however, be a _practical_ herald, he must often
have experienced the difficulty of placing impalements or quarterings
correctly, even on a lozenge. On the long and narrow fusil it would be
impossible. When the fusil, instead of being a mere heraldic bearing, has
to be used as the shape of a shield for the actual use of the painter or
engraver, it must of necessity be widened into the lozenge; and as the
latter is probably only the same distaff with little more wool upon it,
there seems no objection to the arrangement. BROCTUNA is too good an
antiquary not to know on recollection that the "vyings of widows" had
little to do with funeral arrangements in those days. Procrustes, the
herald, came down at all great funerals, and regulated everything with just
so much pomp, and no more, as the precise rank of the deceased entitled him
to.
P. P. had not the smallest intention of giving BROCTUNA offence by pointing
out what seems a fatal objection to his theory.
Hugh Clark, a well-known modern writer upon Heraldry, gives the following
definition of the word lozenge:
"Lozenge, a four-cornered figure, resembling a pane of glass in old
casements: some suppose it a physical composition given for colds, and
was invented to reward eminent physicians."
Plutarch says, in the _Life of Theseus_, that at Megara, an ancient town of
Greece, the tombstones, under which the bodies of the Amazons lay, were
shaped after that form, which some conjecture to be the cause why ladies
have their arms on lozenges.