If an interest in heraldry brought you here, you were correct in associating messengers-at-arms with the Scottish officers of arms. The messengers’ arms were never offensive: since at least the sixteenth century, messengers, in addition to heralds and pursuivants, have been amongst the officers in Scotland ‘wearing and bearing’ the Royal Arms. The silver badge of arms, or blazon, and the wonderfully named wand of peace are the insignia still issued to every messenger-at-arms by the Lord Lyon King of Arms.
In 2018, by virtue of the further appointment I received from the Lord Lyon, I became ‘entitled to act and appear as a Pursuivant of Arms in matters pertaining to the Laws of Arms with audience before the Court of the Lord Lyon and other Courts of Chivalry’. Therefore, if you seek a genealogist, or an agent to represent you in the Lyon Court, you have found the office of Unicorn Pursuivant. If you might like to be one of ‘those availing themselves’ of that office, please do contact me.
These are the arms of the royal burgh of Falkland: Azure, on a mount a stag lodged reguardant at the foot of an oak tree, all Proper. This is the badge of Falkland Pursuivant: A stag lodged reguardant Gules, gorged of a coronet of four fleur-de-lys and four crosses pattee. The photograph shows ‘the stag lodged reguardant Gules’, from the armorial sculpture by the artist Nina Macpherson, my daughter.
