FISH IN HERALDRY. 69 



others, display the sea-maiden in their armorial bear- 

 ings. With her comb and looking-glass she smiles at us 

 from the shields of the Holmes, Ellises, Lapps ; and as a 

 supporter holds up the arms of the Viscounts Boyne and 

 Hood, the Earls of Howth and Caledon, and is borne by 

 the heads of the families of Sinclair of Rosslyn, and Scott 

 of Harden. Two mermaids crowned are the supporters 

 of the Boston arms. La Mellusine, " a very beautiful 

 syren in a bath, who with one hand combs her thick hair 

 over her shoulders, and with the other holds a mirror," is 

 an instance of its very frequent device in French heraldry ; 

 and another, on a coronet, holding a bottle and a glass, 

 a specimen of the Belgian " Mermaid." 



Her kindred, the tritons, are also familiar badges. As 

 a crest, a triton leaving the sedges is borne by the Tatton 

 Sykes ; a merman with a hawk's bill is the crest of the 

 Lany and Cratfield families. Two Tritons support the 

 Lyttelton arms, and other instances are displayed on 

 the shields of the Earls of Sandwich, and some of the 

 Campbells. 



Of fishes, religious and ecclesiastical, the science takes 

 comprehensive notice, and from the w^alls of Dendereh and 

 the tombs of the martyrs, the fish symbol has come down 

 to our own day, and the Pisces may be seen on the doorway 

 of Iffley Church, in the nave of Peterchurch in Hereford- 

 shire, and elsewhere. Whales are the insignia of Whalley 

 Abbey ; bream of Peterborough ; haddock of Petershausen ; 

 herring of St. Edmund's, and also of the Black Friars 

 Priory at Yarmouth. The arms assumed by monasteries 

 were sometimes those of their benefactors, as the pike of 

 Calder Abbey, largely endowed by the Lucy family, and 

 the salmon of St. Augustine's at Bristol, in memory of the 

 fishery attached to that abbey by the Lords of Berkeley. 



