Games - Flag of Wales

Home > Listing Index > Games > Flag of Wales

	Games - Flag of Wales

The national flag of Wales is The Red Dragon (Welsh: Y Ddraig Goch
). It consists of a red dragon, passant, on a green and white field. As with any heraldic charge, the exact representation of the dragon is not standardised and many different interpretations exist.

The flag was granted official status in 1959, but the red dragon itself has been associated with Wales for centuries; indeed, the flag is sometimes claimed to be the oldest national flag still in use. The origin of the adoption of the dragon symbol is now lost in history and myth. A plausible theory is that the Romans brought the emblem to what is now Wales during their occupation of Britain, but it could be even older. The green and white stripes of the flag were additions by the House of Tudor, the Welsh dynasty that held the English throne from 1485 to 1603. Green and white are also the colours of the leek, another national emblem of Wales.

The oldest recorded use of the dragon to symbolise Wales is from the Historia Brittonum, written around 820, but it is popularly supposed to have been the battle standard of Arthur and other ancient Celtic leaders. It is particularly associated in Welsh poetry with Cadwaladr king of Gwynedd from c.655 to 682.

Many legends are associated with the Welsh dragon. The most famous is the prophecy of Myrddin (or Merlin) of a long fight between a red dragon and a white dragon. According to the prophecy, the white dragon would at first dominate but eventually the red dragon would win, this eventually victory and recaputuring of Lloegr would be according to Welsh legend be brought about by Y Mab Darogan. This believed to represent the conflict in the 5th and 6th centuries between the British Celts (who later became the Welsh) and the invading Saxons.

The Welsh Flag is the only flag of the constituent countries of the UK not to be used in the Union Jack. This may be because when the Union Jack was created Wales was considered to be part of England, but the fact that the other three countries have crosses for flags would have made it difficult to integrate the Red Dragon. There have since been proposals to include the Dragon or the flag of Saint David on the Union Jack but these have never caught on.

Wales and Bhutan are presently the only countries to have a dragon on their flag, though the Chinese flag also featured a dragon during the Qing Dynasty.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Flag of Wales ]

Searches on eBay

flag of wales