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Pan-Celtic Coat of Arms

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This Coat of Arms is part of a project exploring an Alternate 1920’s where WW1 never occurred and Pan-National movements are on the rise across Europe. 

In this timeline, Pan-Celticism has developed into a strong movement in the traditionally Celtic regions of the British Isles (Wales, Cornwall, Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Mann) as well as Brittany.

The upper left quarter shows an Irish Bull.  I’ve chosen a brown bull in reference to Donn Cúailnge, the Brown Bull of Cooley, who is the subject of the early Irish Epic, The Cattle Raid of Cooley.

The upper right quarter is of course Y Ddraig Goch, the Red Dragon of Wales.

The lower right quarter shows a Manx Cat, a breed native to the Isle of Man which is famous for its lack of a tail.  I chose white for the cat’s fur as a reference to Pangur Bán, an Irish poem about a white cat named Pangur Bán, written sometime during the 9th Century AD.  

I chose a Scottish Stag for the lower left quarter.  Scotland’s traditional heraldic animal is in fact the unicorn, not the stag, but I decided to use the more Celtic stag as opposed to the Greco-Roman Unicorn.  This was partially inspired by the logo of the English Welsh & Scottish Railway, which uses the Scottish Stag alongside the Lion of England and the Dragon of Wales.

The Inescutcheon (smaller shield) is divided into two halves.  The right half represents Cornwall.   Two old Cornish families, the Vyvyans and Trevelyans, claim decent from the only survivor of the destruction of Lyonesse, who escaped on the back of a white horse.

The left half of the Inescutcheon represents Brittany, though the use of the traditional Breton colours of Black and White.  I couldn’t find any references to a symbolic animal for Brittany (if there is one please let me know in the comments) so I chose to use a fox.  This was mainly because I like foxes, but at a stretch it could be said to represent Reynard/Renart, the trickster fox from the Medieval French fables.

Notes

I haven’t so much bent the rules of heraldry here as thrown the rulebook out of the window!  There are a lot of things ‘wrong’ with this shield according the rules of heraldry, but I like the design, so I’m allowing myself to cheat with this one ;-)

This curly style of design is often referred to as Celtic, but it would probably be unrecognisable to the Pre-Roman inhabitants of Britain and Ireland.  

The term Celtic dates from the 17th Century, when a Welsh Linguist named Edward Lluyd noted the similarities between Welsh, Gaelic, Cornish and Breton.  He called these languages Celtic and the name stuck.

This Coat of Arms is a work of fiction; no political comment is made or implied.

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Can you render these separately? They're beautiful!