I realised, that having made the Heraldry Ontology (HO) to have an ontology containing unicorns, that I’d not actually put in an escutcheon using a unicorn. Said beast is there in the HO as a mythical creature that can be used as a charge, but I really neded an actyual escutcheon using a unicorn, rather than just having it implied by the HO. The following blazon is, I think, such an escutcheon:
Vert with unicorn argent attired gules with eroteme argent
this has a green background with a white unicorn, with a red horn, with a white eroteme (question mark) underneath.
I’ve extended the HO in a couple of ways to do this a little more properly:
- The ordering of the charges in the blazon indicates where they are on the escutcheon. Exactly how they are placed depends, at least in part, on how many charges are on the escutcheon. So, rather than describing the exact spatial region on the shield where a charge is placed, I’ve simply given a data property with the “charge priority”. This just says where in the blazon the charge occurs; then the rest is up to the designer – as actually happens in reality. The first charge is the “chief2 charge and takes centre stage; secondary charges are arranged appropriately, though, as far as I can tell, with no strict rules.
- I’ve also made the sinister/dexter aspect of the beast explicit. We need to know which way the beast faces. There is a default in the interpretation of blazon, but this needs to be captured in the HO explicitly. Charges are dexter by default; that is, facing to the bearer’s right (the viewer’s left). So, this unicorn is dexter. In blazon, only sinister is explicitly mentioned, as dexter is the default.
This is how I build up the complex class expressions with everything closed off so my implementation of the rule of tincture would work:
- Do the existential graph.
- Where closure is needed for properties that are not functional) I work from the inside out. For each property I change the “some” in the axiom to “onlysome” – a bit of syntactic sugar in Kudu’s implemenntation of Manchester OWL syntax.
- Each time I add an “onlysome”, I allow Kudu to reformat the OWL to put in the closure axioms.
- Once I’ve got to the outside of the axioms, everything is closed.
- The only exception is that I had to fiddle around with the is charged with property and do some horrid cutting and pasting (as there are two of these properties used). The “add closure axiom” function is not working properly in Kudu, so \I had to do it all this way. Below are the various bits of OWL as I build things up.
The existential of the escutcheon:
Individual: 'Vert with unicorn argent attired gules with eroteme argent'
Annotations: [in heraldry]
label "Vert with unicorn argent attired gules with eroteme argent"^^string
Types: [in heraldry]
hasPart some
(Field
and ('is charged with' some
(Eroteme
and ('has tincture' some Argent)
and ('has charge priority' value 2)))
and ('is charged with' some
(Unicorn
and ('has creature profile' some Dexter)
and ('has tincture' some Argent)
and (hasPart some
(Horn
and ('has tincture' some Gules)))
and ('has charge priority' value 1)))
and ('has tincture' some Vert)),
Escutcheon
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Note the unicorn has a part a horn that is red; that is, “attired gules”. I suppose I should say that it has a part “exactly 1 horn” as it is a unicorn… or maybe that goes on the unicorn class. I should also say how many unicorn and so on, but I haven’t.
Putting an “onlysome” on the has tincture some Gules, we get
Individual: 'Vert with unicorn argent attired gules with eroteme argent'
Annotations: [in heraldry]
label "Vert with unicorn argent attired gules with eroteme argent"^^string
Types: [in heraldry]
hasPart some
(Field
and ('is charged with' some
(Eroteme
and ('has tincture' some Argent)
and ('has charge priority' value 2)))
and ('is charged with' some
(Unicorn
and ('has creature profile' some Dexter)
and ('has tincture' some Argent)
and (hasPart some
(Horn
and ('has tincture' onlysome Gules)))
and ('has charge priority' value 1)))
and ('has tincture' some Vert)),
Escutcheon
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After some automatic re-formattting we get:
(Horn
and (('has tincture' some Gules)
and ('has tincture' only Gules))))
and ('has charge priority' value 1)))
and ('has tincture' some Vert))
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going all the way through, we get:
Individual: 'Vert with unicorn argent attired gules with eroteme argent'
Annotations: [in heraldry]
label "Vert with unicorn argent attired gules with eroteme argent"^^string
Types: [in heraldry]
* 'Coloured Escutcheon and metal charge',
(hasPart some
(Field
and (('has tincture' some Vert)
and ('has tincture' only Vert))
and ('is charged with' some
(Eroteme
and (('has tincture' some Argent)
and ('has tincture' only Argent))
and ('has charge priority' value 2)))
and ('is charged with' some
(Unicorn
and (('has tincture' some Argent)
and ('has tincture' only Argent))
and ('has creature profile' some Dexter)
and (hasPart some
(Horn
and (('has tincture' some Gules)
and ('has tincture' only Gules))))
and ('has charge priority' value 1)))
and ('is charged with' only
((Eroteme
and (('has tincture' some Argent)
and ('has tincture' only Argent))
and ('has charge priority' value 2))
or (Unicorn
and (('has tincture' some Argent)
and ('has tincture' only Argent))
and ('has creature profile' some Dexter)
and (hasPart some
(Horn
and (('has tincture' some Gules)
and ('has tincture' only Gules))))
and ('has charge priority' value 1))))))
and (hasPart only
(Field
and (('has tincture' some Vert)
and ('has tincture' only Vert))
and ('is charged with' some
(Eroteme
and (('has tincture' some Argent)
and ('has tincture' only Argent))
and ('has charge priority' value 2)))
and ('is charged with' some
(Unicorn
and (('has tincture' some Argent)
and ('has tincture' only Argent))
and ('has creature profile' some Dexter)
and (hasPart some
(Horn
and (('has tincture' some Gules)
and ('has tincture' only Gules))))
and ('has charge priority' value 1)))
and ('is charged with' only
((Eroteme
and (('has tincture' some Argent)
and ('has tincture' only Argent))
and ('has charge priority' value 2))
or (Unicorn
and (('has tincture' some Argent)
and ('has tincture' only Argent))
and ('has creature profile' some Dexter)
and (hasPart some
(Horn
and (('has tincture' some Gules)
and ('has tincture' only Gules))))
and ('has charge priority' value 1)))))),
Escutcheon
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Which, I think, is particularly “manly OWL” (or MOWL). It also, perhaps, shows how writing this sort of thing by hand is so beastly or just shouldn’t be done at all… Putting the charge priorities and creature profiles into the already expanded escutchia will be a real pain, but will just be a matter of being systematic.
Anyway, it classifies proply in the HO as a coloured escutcheon with metal charge. This version of the HO is available.
Robert Stevens' Blog 