Inverness Arms

After dropping Mrs P off down the town for a meander round the shops I stopped briefly by the river as on way in I thought I saw some unusual activity. Whatever it was it had gone. But got a quick blip of this bronze (?) plaque which is a small part of the war memorial. Not much but down in the left corner you can see a heraldic device which is the old arms of Inverness when it was one of the ancient royal burghs. A status which actually meant something. The burgh had definite boundaries and a ruling body. The arms date from pre-Reformation times as can be seen by the rood. But that proved no hindrance to their continued use until within living memory. But the supporters are a camel and an elephant. Where on earth do these come from? Most Invernessians of the day can't have been all that familiar with such creatures. Possibly many had never even seen a picture of them other than these arms. The arms also appear on provosts' lamps in the burgh but unfortunately without supporters but with some extra elements. The lamp shown has the arms of the later district council but clearly based on the old burgh arms. There's a cornucopia, or horn of plenty, which is within the shield on the lamp but is above the helm on the war memorial version. The so-called city of Inverness was refused a coat-of arms by Lord Lyon on the grounds that it wasn't a legal entity in any real sense of the word. No boundary and no ruling corporation.