Aux armes · mottoes: notes

1. CLARERE AUDERE GAUDERE (Be bright: be daring: be joyful)

This does not incite ostentation nor recklessness: clarity and boldness are ancient virtues and were aspirations of many Classical and Enlightenment thinkers, now shared by, for instance, Buddhists, Critical Rationalists and Quakers. For the latter all the rest may be vanity, since much that is intrinsic to heraldry is incompatible with their Testimonies of equality and simplicity and, by implication, the Peace Testimony. Whereas an exemplary ‘enlightened’ and undaunted outlook is customary to them:

Let your light so shine before men ….

Matthew 5:16.

Live adventurously.

The Society of Friends (1964, London). Advices and Queries: Advice IV.

As for joyfulness, the motto should not be mistaken as merely urging hedonism, rather it also accords with the ancient virtue of eudaimonia⁠^[a] (εὐδαιμονία, happiness). The primary classical sense of which was ‘living well and acting well’: the emotional state now almost exclusively associated with ‘happiness’ was then seen as secondary and a consequence of the prior active virtue. Nonetheless, this detracts little from the simple exhortation to be joyful and, rightly, others will take their own inspirations from the motto — words once uttered leave the tender care of their author to join the unruly commonwealth of meaning.

2. Whether or not this provenance is appropriate is uncertain: there are other etymological candidates, distinct from the Gaelic incidence, namely:

• The name was also local to southern England from the early Middle Ages, where it might have been an anglicised heterograph of Gil, a common medieval diminutive of Guillebert/Gilebert (Gilbert) — a Norman French name from Old High German Giselbert, a typical Norman compound formation: gisil (a Celtic loan-word: a pledge, promise⁠^†) + beraht/bereht (bright, shining). The inchoate and variable historical spelling of the name in England (Geal/e, Geall/e, Gell/e, Guille, Gylle, Jeal) supports this conjecture, but weakly, since English orthography was chaotic before the publication of Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language in 1755 and its phonic structure remains incoherent. Its earliest recorded use as an English surname is in thirteenth century Sussex and London, although Gil was used as a given name in the counties of Sussex, Surrey and Kent from the eleventh century — where Geal(e) still has its highest incidence as a surname. The settled forms of Geal/Geale predominated from the eighteenth century, when both were used somewhat interchangeably. These variant spellings branched apart after the Census of 1841, when consistency in British surnames became the emergent norm.
  † Apparently coincidentally, geall in Scottish Gaelic is a promise or pledge).
• Another putative derivation from Norman French is through a mutation of Guille, a diminuative of Guillaume (William) — from Old High German Willahelm, compounded of willo (will, wish, desire) + helm (helmet).
• Alternatively, it may derive from Gilles (shield bearer), an Old French name, from Latin Aegidius (‘aegis bearer’, protector), from Greek aigis (αιγίς: the shield of Zeus). The earliest recorded use of Gilles as a given name is in late twelfth century France. This was introduced and anglicised somewhat later as Giles. During the late Middle Ages Giles was a relatively common surname widely distributed in southern England and Geal may be an aberrational regional spelling. The English pronunciation of Geal still proximates to the French of Gilles.

Despite the obvious temptation, there is no evidence for a derivation from a supposed truncation of the (late Middle) English congeal, from Old French congeler, from medieval Latin congelare (compounded: con- ‘together’ + -gelare ‘freeze’): they are merely homophones. Even so the Proto-Indo-European roots of *ghel- ‘to shine’ and *gel- ‘frost’ are probably cognate.

3. ΖΗΤΕΙΝ ΤΗΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑΝ (Seek the truth)

This is an evocation of a characteristic of Classical Greek scepticism, πάντοτε ζητεῖν τὴν ἀλήθειαν⁠^[b,c] (ever seeking the truth): whereas the Gospel is assertive, κ⁠[αὶ] γνώσεσθε τὴν ἀλήθειαν · καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια ἐλευθερώσει ὑμᾶς⁠^[d] (And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free).

4. On truth, liberty and power:

For Truth certainly would do well enough, if she were once left to shift for her Self. She seldom has received, and I fear never will receive, much Assistance from the Power of Great men; to whom she is but rarely known, and more rarely welcome.

John Locke (1685). A Letter Concerning Toleration.

La vérité est donc à la fois l'ennemie du pouvoir comme de ceux qui l'exercent ….
Truth is at once the enemy of power and those who exercise it ….⁠^‡

Nicolas de Condorcet (1791). Cinq mémoires sur l'instruction publique (803KB, PDF). Cinquième mémoire: Sur l'instruction relative aux sciences: Choix des maîtres.

‡ There have been politicians and leaders who were exceptions to these maxims, and their ineluctable consequences, but they are few: Solon,⁠^[e] Cincinnatus⁠^[f] and George Washington stand out. In as much as those who wield power find truth extraneous or even inimical to their interests and aspirations, so is an abiding concern for truth a necessity for the lovers of Liberty to prevail against them; since, against the enduring and ingrained delusions of politicians:

Being first virtues of human activities, truth and justice are uncompromising.

John Rawls (1971). A Theory of Justice. Harvard.

See also: Lord Acton (1907). Historical Essays and Studies: Appendix.

Again, the relevance of the Johannine assertion (John 8:32) that the truth shall make you free is plain, although fortuitous, given the secular context.

1. Eudaimonia in: Ancient Ethical Theory. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, passim.
2. • Diogenes Laërtius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Book 9: Pyrrhon, Line 70. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard, 1972. Greek | English.
   • Ibid., (Trans. Robert Drew Hicks, 1925). Wikisource.
3. • See: Sextus Empiricus (Trans. Bury, R.G.). Outlines of Pyrrhonism. Loeb Classical Library. Havard, 1933.
   • Mary Mills Patrick (1899). Sextus Empiricus and Greek Scepticism. Project Gutenberg.
4. John 8:32, Codex Sinaiticus. Codex Sinaiticus Project.
5. • Harry Thurston Peck (1898). Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities: Solon. Perseus Digital Library.
   • Diogenes Laërtius. Op. cit., Book 1: Solon.
   • Ibid., (Trans. Robert Drew Hicks, 1925). Wikisource.
6. • Harry Thurston Peck. Op. cit.: Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus.
   • Livy (Titus Livius), (Robert Seymour Conway, Charles Flamstead Walters). Ab urbe condita. Book 3: 26. Oxford, 1914.
   • Ibid., (Trans. Rev. Canon Roberts, 1905). From the Founding of the City. Book 3: 26-29. Wikisource.

The so-called ‘Geal’ Celtic interlaced knot, the topological equilvalent of an ‘endless knot’.