Quote Originally Posted by piperdbh View Post
This has probably been answered before, but where does the language of heraldry come from? I can pick up some French words, some Latin and some English, which seems to be a strange combination, especialy the syntax. Is it the product of centuries of cultural mixing, with the protection/support of monarchs and governments?
There's a very funny rant (well, very funny if you have the strange sense of humor that develops after too much exposure to old armorials) by the English heraldic scholar Oswald Barron that blows apart a lot of the mystique of blazonry. It's from the first issue of the journal The Ancestor, from 1902. The passage on blazon starts a little less than halfway down the page with the sentence, "At the outset of our study of medieval armory we meet a difficulty in the fact that our earliest examples of blazonry are written as a rule in the French speech, which was so long in use amongst the great folk and the lawyers."

http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeohzt4/Barron0402.htm