Tuesday, November 30, 2021

November 30th - Andrew sits on a stone

 Today is a very interesting day for Scots.

First up, most well known is the fact that today is "St. Andrew's Day".


A day for feasting and celebrating the patron saint of Scotland, making it the de facto National Day for Scotland.

Fly the saltire (the cross of St. Andrew), and it's a nice prelude to the upcoming Hogmanay, then Burn's Night.

Another peculiar quirk for today as it relates to Scotland is that today was the day in 1996 that the Stone of Scone was returned to Scotland.


The Stone of Destiny, a bunch of neat history there.  Apparently, it was the 'pillow' of some saint or other who had a vision, or the first king of the Scots was the crowned while sitting on it.  

Kenneth MacAlpin (who's somewhere away back in my own family tree) had brought the stone to Scone.

Now, the Brits had stolen the stone during Edward I's invasions in Scotland in 1296 and brought it to eventually incorporate it into the Coronation Chair.

There it sat until about 1950 when 4 plucky Scots stole it and tried to bring it home... but didn't last.  Queen Elizabeth's coronation in 1953 had the stone under the chair.  That is if you believe that it was recovered at all... I think there was a Hamish MacBeth episode that covered this.

But this day in 1996 it was announced that the stone would officially return home.  Started it's resting place at Edinburgh castle, but is now available for viewing in the Perth City Hall.

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