Origins of the Scottish flag.

I’m certainly not an historian, nor do I really know my own country’s History (I had to wait until I came to Scotland to actually learn about the Auld Alliance between the two countries!), but over the months I’ve learned a bit about the local History and the symbols up here. the main difference I found between France and Scotland is that only a tourist will wear a T-Shirt saying ‘I love Paris’ or having the Eiffel Tower on it, meanwhile it’s fairly common to see Scottish people wearing their flag on any kind of garment!

So for those of you interested in this country, you ought to know a bit about what you’d be facing!

Let’s start this ‘Histor-ish’ course with the origins of the national Flag!

It is said that this flag actually dates from the 9th century, making it the penultimate flag still in use throughout the world and the oldest national flag.

To make a long story short (told you, it’s an historish course!), King Angus was leading the Pics and Scots armies against the Angles back in the 9th century. They were largely outnumbered with the promise of a bitter defeat. Then they decided to give God a shot and prayed one night.

Good ol’ St Andrews, always ready to help appeared to Angus (the king, not MacGyver!) and assured him they would be victorious.

And then guess what… exactly, they won! But what’s really interesting is how they manage to win! All of a sudden in the blue sky appeared a white saltire (a diagonal cross). It is said that St Andrews died a martyr on a white saltire.

Of course the Pics and the Scots were galvanized by such a symbol, but the Angles were scared out of their mind and so destabilized that they were defeated (nowadays we would just simply say it’s two planes crossing… which would have been even more amazing at the time!)

Anyway… so King Angus decided this symbol, a white saltire over a blue background, would be used as the flag!

Truth be told at that time there was no Scotland per se, so of course no national flag! The current version became the official one in 1540.

And this, was the first Historish course about Scotland!