The Winged Stag (‘cerfs volants')
Thursday Mini Curio #1 (23/01/2025)
The Winged Stag
Winged animals are not uncommon in fiction, from pegasus to gryphons and so on. Most have deep mythological roots. Almost a decade ago(…) when I was first worldbuilding, I thought, wouldn’t a winged stag be cool?!
And I thought I was so original—I was not.
Royal Arms
Flash forward eight-odd years later, and researching a dissertation on magic and mental illness, I came across my winged stag in Hedeman’s monograph Royal Image. There it was, in gold, standing rampant as supporters on the early French royal heraldry of Charles VI (and some of the later heraldry of his father, Charles V, and late medieval France more generally—such as our Duke of Bourbon, pictured). This led me down a rabbit-hole, as history research tends to…
It’s a very unusual symbol. Well, I think so. And, turns out, I am far from the first to be interested in winged stags. In his Book of Imaginary Beings (1957) Jorge Luis Borges gave this beast the name ‘Peryton’ which I later…borrowed. I didn’t want to share my special winged stag but knowledge is theft and good creativity is kleptomania, maybe.
What’s really interesting though is the French manuscripts refer to them as ‘cerfs volants’. If you put that into Google Translate, you’ll get ‘kites’ (or stag beetle, too). Cute. There’s lots of discussion about this online, if you care to see. One day I’ll do a deep-dive post.
I do not own the images shared in this post.