The Forbes Crest is a stag’s head with ten tynes on its antlers, and that specific formulation has been in place since at least the 1670s and is described in Sir George Mackenzie’s ‘Families of Scotland manuscript’. It was registered in the Lyon office at that time.


Like we saw with Colquhoun and Davidson (and with more to follow) stags tend to have the double meanings of reflecting the proud, noble, strong and brave virtues of the kindred’s chief, while also boasting about the natural wealth of their estates. James Coats 1725 New Dictionary of Heraldry stated that ‘In Armoury they may be said to denote such as have the Privilege of Hunting, or such as live in a Country abounding in Stags’.


Whether the ten tines has any specific relevance is unclear, it could perhaps refer to the various cadet branches of the Forbes line, including the Forbes of Pitsligo, Tolquhon, Brux, Corsinday, Corss, along with several others, although it’s doubtful that the number of branches would have been static for that long.


The stag was used as far back as the 1560s and the Workman Manuscript, although back in the 1540s the crest had been a bear’s head, referring to the family legend of the founder of the family slaying a bear. Given there were also three bears’ heads on the shield of the Lord Forbes’ arms, loosing one on the crest seems reasonable. For some time the family name was (erroneously) thought to mean ‘For-bear’ (See Nisbet’s System of Heraldry of the 1720s), so the bears may originally have just been a pun, to which a legend of bear-killing was later attached. A fun fact about the name Forbes, it was originally two syllables, hence spellings at the time along the lines of ‘Forboys’ (see the 1570s Estimate of the Scottish Nobility during the Minority of James the Sixth, published by the Grampian Club in 1873).


The motto since at least Sir David Lindsay’s Armorial of the 1540s has been ‘Grace me guide’. Grace in this sense meaning something like ‘favour’, and this will be an appeal to God. 



Our older Carrick version of the Forbes crest.


MKP 1 August 2024