506 [Proc. B.N.F.C, 



THE LION IN HERALDRY. 



The lion plays such an important part in our national insignia 

 that a few words must here be devoted to his majesty. 



" Chiefest of all terrestrial animals,'' according to old Guillam, 

 the lion occupies the foremost place in the heraldry of every 

 land that has beheld his majestic form and heard the sound of his 

 mighty voice. It may be interesting to enquire in what light 

 he has been represented in past times by his contemporary — man- 

 From the earliest times the lion appears to have been a favourite 

 allegorical device. By universal consent he has been assigned 

 the dignity of the " king of beasts," and endowed by tradition 

 with powerful physical and also mental qualities, such as courage 

 and generosity, and made almost equal to man himself. His 

 whole appearance, with his noble human-like expression, has in 

 it something truly magnificent, and seems to be almost a too 

 powerful adversary of man, and however far back we trace the 

 history of mankind we find him represented on the monuments 

 of every epoch. In Egypt, Africa, Persia, and Greece we have 

 abundant traces of the terror inspired by his name. A golden 

 lion was the emblem of the tribe of Judah, a silver lion was the 

 badge of the Macedonian conqueror. Lions, not tigers, were, 

 we are told in Pocock's " India in Greece," the insignia of many 

 early Indian dynasties. " The head of the lion," says Maurice 

 (Oriental Trinities, p. 232), "both in Persia and Tartary was in 

 a peculiar manner sacred to the solar light : the superior 

 strength, nobility, and grandeur of that animal, and from his 

 being a distinguishing constellation of the Zodiac, the sun 

 shining forth in his greatest splendour from that sign, rendered 

 him a proper type of the sun. In their allegorical fancy the 

 majestic orb of his countenance, his glowing eyeballs and 

 shaggy mane spreading in glory around like rays or clustering 

 sparks of fire, would suggest, better than any other in the 

 animal kingdom, that luminary to the Oriental mind." 



As an emblem of power and sovereignty the lion has been 

 assigned the highest place, and we find abundant use made of 



