The Single Eagle Feather

[creagdhubh]

To answer your question yes you could wear a feather with a clansman crest badge. I will post a scan I have from the Lyon office that covers this subject this evening when I get home.

As to legal feathers.... You can get custom colored eagle feathers from www.realleagalfeathers.com.

They use feathers from birds that are not protected and custom hand color them. I own four of their feathers and they are great.

Quite right, Harold. However, I would also recommend that only an armiger wear a single eagle feather, whether it is an actual, tall feather, or the smaller, silver version already cast with the armiger's circlet (bonnet badge), is a matter of personal preference.

http://www.lyon-court.com/lordlyon/242.html

According to The Court of the Lord Lyon:

"Armigers

A person who has registered his or her own coat of Arms and Crest, or inherited these according to the Laws of Arms in Scotland from an ancestor who had recorded them in the Lyon Register, may wear their own Crest as a badge:

• either on its Wreath, Crest Coronet or Chapeau,
• or, as is more usual, within a plain circlet inscribed with his Motto.

An armiger may also choose to wear instead the Crest badge of his Chief if the armiger is a clansman. An armiger is entitled to one silver eagle's feather behind the plain circlet, and if he is also a Peer he may add his appropriate coronet of rank on top of the circlet."

The Clan Macpherson Association actually has quite a few armigers among its ranks, to include my good friend, Sandy Macpherson of Edinburgh. Despite being a Scottish Armiger, thus having his own crest, he chooses to wear a vintage (well, not so vintage when he first acquired the badge in new condition when he was a young man!) Macpherson clansman's badge with his tall eagle feather tucked behind. See below right:



Even Clan Macpherson Chieftains, such as the late Euan Macpherson of Glentruim, wore his eagle feathers (two in this case, since Glentruim was a Chieftain of a leading cadet branch of the Clan Macpherson - his son, Lachlan has now taken on his late father's mantle) with a Macpherson clansman's badge instead of his own crest, which could have been in the form of a plain circlet, a circlet with two silver eagle feathers, or just his crest and wreath.





Cheers,