Bobby Scotland

There is one flag in Scotland that people are technically forbidden to fly, and yet you will see it everywhere Scots gather in the world. It is the Lion Rampant, a fierce red lion reared up on a field of gold. This is no ordinary flag. It is the royal standard of the Kings of Scots, the personal banner of Scotland's monarchs, going back some eight hundred years. The lion stands on its hind legs, claws out, caught forever in the act of fighting. Around it runs a red border studded with little lilies, called the tressure. King William, remembered as William the Lion, is often said to have carried it first. By strict heraldic law, the Lion Rampant belongs to the sovereign alone. Ordinary people are not supposed to fly it at all. But no Scot has ever truly obeyed that rule, and no one has ever really tried to stop them. It appears at football matches and Highland games, at weddings and homecomings, draped over shoulders and hung from windows. And that is exactly why it matters. Wherever the children of Scotland roar for their own, the lion roars along with them. Red and gold, it is pure defiance woven into cloth, the emblem of a small nation that has never once agreed to lie down and be forgotten. The lion still stands, reared and ready. And so do the people who have claimed it as their own, in every corner of the earth. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿👑⚔️🧬🩸💪 Have you ever flown the Lion Rampant, or seen it raised somewhere far from Scotland?