This splendid photograph of Roddy Macpherson, Unicorn Pursuivant, hides a fascinating tale.
Unicorn takes up the tale himself:
Lyon Macer David Walker took this photograph of Unicorn, former Lyon Macer, in the Signet Library, in front of the portrait of Joseph Grant WS, last Secretary of the Society of Messengers-at-Arms, Edinburgh (instituted by 1631, Lyon with power to select its box masters, and dissolved in 1865). Joseph’s father, Allan Grant, messenger-at-arms in Edinburgh, often Preses of that Society of Messengers-at-Arms, and Unicorn’s grandfather, Alexander Macpherson, messenger-at-arms in Glasgow, sometime President of the Society of Messengers-at-Arms and Sheriff Officers (founded 1922 and still going strong, with the Lord Lyon as its Honorary President) were, as was discovered in time for a Lord Lyon Society lecture in 2022 (the centenary of 1922, of course), distant cousins. To be pursuivantly precise, they were third cousins, four times removed.
