I heard the story reported on the March 10 broadcast of As It Happens, and found confirmation and the image at SwissInfo:
The bear on the coat of arms of canton Bern will continue to display its red penis, the cantonal government has ruled... The cantonal government was responding to a written question from Liberal Green parliamentarian Thomas Brönnimann, who wondered whether it would not be more appropriate to depict the bear without its masculine attributes, so that the population as a whole would feel better represented... The bear has a tradition that goes back at least 600 years and has been represented in this way since the 15th century...The bear has always been depicted on official documents with a red phallus. In view of this tradition, the cantonal government believed that it was reasonable to continue to depict the bear in this way. Nor did it wish to conduct an online survey on the bear’s future appearance. In its view, such a survey would not be representative and would have little informative value.
While not being a connoisseur of the bear penis, I cannot help but think there is something wrong with that sucker.
ReplyDeleteSo many paw penises...
ReplyDeleteand the four teethenises. :-)
DeleteAs a perfectly normal person, I've taken to looking at the royal coat of arms they often have in churches around the UK. I'm convinced the supporter's phalli shrink over the years. In rural churches with Stuart arms they're more "realistic" (presumably to a 17th century farmer a lion was essentially as mythical as a unicorn) while in city churches with Hanover arms they shrink away to mere gestures.
ReplyDeleteAlso you might want to check out the heraldic panther, as seen on arms like those of Catherine Parr or the dyers company. Just a historical oddment.
Aw, let the bear keep his dick.
ReplyDeletethat post title sounds like a candidate for r/brandnewsentence
ReplyDeleteraphael
ps.: i am disappointed that whoever wrote the quoted text for swissinfo missed the opportunity to write ‘…to conduct an online survey of the bear’s future appendage.’
Sweden castrated its lion.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2770
(and some ...weird... discussion in the comments)
There has been discussion in Flanders/Belgium as well about their lion's dick. Can't find a suitable link, as the Belgian press is pretty much entirely pay-walled.
Many examples here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_(heraldry)
Wow - nice links. Thanks, Nepkarel.
DeletePeople are worried about a cartoonish phallus on a coat of arms? Have all the world's problems been solved?
ReplyDeleteSuch bureaucrats should have been around in the modest era that followed Michaelangelo, et al.
ReplyDeleteAnd good to see such deprictions, especially with regard to your previous post with the jacked up truck.
Sorry, depictions ... spelling is something I often coc ... muck up
By the bye, here in the Western Southern Hemisphere countries, Australia and New Zealand, we refer to those vehicles as utes.
Sadly, any play on words with that name, in the present context, would be lost on the vast majority of your readers.
Our habit of using colloquialisms, strong here in the 'colonies', is most often fuelled with abbreviated words.
In this instance 'ute' being a shortened form of utility vehicle.