Englands old flag revisited

March 23, 2006 at 9:05 am | In Uncategorized |


So the White Dragon or The wyvern existed only in heraldry.
The Flag itself is a factual piece of English Heritage,
It is an ancient symbol associated with the old kings of Wessex. It is a two-legged, winged dragon with a barbed tail. “Wyvern” is derived from the Old French guivre, meaning ‘viper’. In recent military history, the gold wyvern on black square background was the formation sign of the 43rd Wessex Division in World War II. A wyvern on a pedestal inscribed “Wessex” was the badge of the Wessex Brigade, 1958-69, and the Wessex Regiment, 1967-95. In all of these representations, the wyvern has one leg raised.
After a brief bit more info there is slight disagreement over the exact design,but as I knew nothing about either until recently,for me either is fine !!.

http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/gb-wessx.html

http://www.icons.org.uk/nom/nominations/whitedragon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_flags

We should keep in mind that England had a history long before the Normans, and the flag of Wessex betokens this. What we might nowadays call the “wyvern” is the “drake” (OE draca) or “wurm” (OE wyrm) of the West Saxons — that is, a “dragon”. The Wessex men flew a mythofaunomorphic flag of a golden dragon (as similarly the Cymru or Welsh flew a red dragon) overhead into battle. Indeed, such a golden dragon was carried by the English of King Harold Godwinsson at both of his last battles, those of Stamford and Hastings

Information from a number of sources went into this post !!,as I said before I like both,I would like to see it reborn for all in England, possibly as a canton design on the St George perhaps if not on it’s own ?.

No Comments yet »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.